


Love Reinvented

by hedonisticnightmares



Category: Sherlock (TV), Total Eclipse (1995)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst, Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-07 23:43:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1918584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hedonisticnightmares/pseuds/hedonisticnightmares
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1870s- When John Watson, a married, doctor- turned poet, receives a letter from Sherlock Holmes presenting his work, he is astounded.  He can’t imagine anyone so young could write such revolutionary and moving poetry.  Upon inviting Holmes to his estate in order to help him gain more recognition for his writing, John can’t help but become captivated by the young man’s wild and uninhibited spirit.  The two of them engage in a damaging and tumultuous relationship that neither seems to be able to escape from completely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Valeria2067](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valeria2067/gifts).



> My first ever Johnlock fic! I had this idea kicking around in my head for a while and thought it was perfectly suited to give as my gift for Exchangelock on Tumblr! This entire fic is based on the story/relationship depicted in the film Total Eclipse between poets Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud. I kept the premise very similar, but the movie is rather graphic and violent, so I did a good bit of tweaking to dial that back. You don't really need to have seen the film for this fic to make sense, though it probably is helpful if you have, as I play fast and extremely loose with the timeline and setting, so having seen the film will give you a better idea of how these things line up, but it's not by any means necessary. I'm beta-less, but I do my best to edit with a fine toothed comb, so you can bet I've read through it several times!

John stumped into the bar as he had come used to doing every other day for the last several years.  Sometimes he drank, and when he did, he drank heavily, but mostly he came to sit alone and read.  The owner had come to know him, and he greeted him as he approached.

“Ah, Doctor Watson, good afternoon. You have a visitor.”          

John looked past the bar’s owner to his usual table, where a distinguished looking man sat, older than himself, but only by a handful of years.  He looked rather out of place in the bar, as he maintained an air of dignity that drunkards and the dishonest sorts that frequented the place did not, could not, possess.

“Has he been waiting long?”  John was already on his way to the table before he was given an answer, and he was handed a business card as he reached the table.

“Doctor Watson, I presume.”

John took the card, leaning heavily on his cane as he took in the printed black ink that read **Mycroft Holmes** in elaborate script, dead center.  On the back was an address, though John spent almost no time studying it before he returned his attention to the man in front of him.

“I’ve come to discuss my brother’s work with you. I am concerned that, in light of the recent manuscript that was published, that some of his work might be deemed… scandalous. I have been doing my best to collect his remaining work and destroy it.”

A muscle jumped in John’s jaw, and he shifted so that he could sit down across from Mycroft, his cane resting against the table.  He could tell from the look on Mycroft’s face that he expected him to comply fully with whatever it was that he requested, with little or no resistance.  “I think it is safe to say that I’ve always used the utmost discretion when it comes to publishing your brother’s work. I don’t know why. I’ve certainly nothing to show for it,” he leaned forward, “he was the poet of a century, Mr. Holmes. There was no one before or after like him. They will read his work for centuries to come, and long after you and I have expired.”

Mycroft tilted his head in a way that seemed to convey he had little concern for what John Watson’s opinion was on the matter, “I had no idea he was so well known.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you were wondering, John and Sherlock's age difference is much greater than in cannon. There's about ten or twelve years between them (John being older at about 32/33) as I needed him to be older to give him experience over Sherlock in regards to his writing. Sherlock is on the verge of turning 21 at the beginning of this fic and by the end is about 31, just to give you an idea of timeline.


	2. Arrival

John made his way towards the train station, eager to finally meet the young man he had been exchanging letters with for just under a year.  He showed great promise, Sherlock Holmes, and John wondered if he would be as riveting in person as he was in his letters and poetry.  The only problem was that he wasn’t quite sure who to look for.  They had never met in person before, and he had never seen a photograph of Sherlock Holmes before either.  Still, he was in fair spirits; surely they would know one another when they met. 

John was nearly to the station when he passed a striking young man headed in the opposite direction.  He had a head of unruly dark curls, and stood a good ten centimeters over himself, but they passed without speaking.  He had a wild look about him that made it seem as if he had breezed through on an East wind.  The thought crossed that the young man could be Sherlock Holmes, but John couldn’t imagine trying to stop someone who thrummed with such energy, and so he let him pass.

John waited for nearly a half hour before he decided that perhaps his guest had either missed the train entirely or wandered out of the station on his own.  They hadn’t really made specific arrangements about it, and John blamed himself just a little for the oversight.  He had been eager to get Sherlock out to the city and really talk with him.  The prospect of mentoring someone so talented was appealing all on its own, but he hoped they might be able to learn from one another as well.  Either way, he would more assuredly hear news of him if he were home rather than out.  Sherlock, of course, had the address, and at very least would be able to ask directions if he had trouble of any kind.  He thought again of the young man he had passed on the way in, and he wondered if perhaps he should have tried to stop him after all.

It was time for dinner by the time John reached home again, more certainly, the home of his wife’s father, but he tried not to dwell on that little detail.  He couldn’t help the fact that there had been a rebellion, nor could he help the fact that they had been forced to flee due to his own involvement in the rebellion.  He had lost nearly everything in the process, including his small medical practice, and so had thrown himself even deeper into writing, which he had previously pursued on the side rather than as a primary source of income.   Though, he had been rather successful in both fields, writing had always been a first love, whereas he had become a doctor in order to help people in a more direct manner.  He had assisted many refugees and protesters while he’d still had his practice, which had been a primary reason for his having to flee his home.  He wouldn’t ever say he regretted his involvement though, despite having become nearly destitute in the process.

Once inside, he removed his coat and top hat, announcing his arrival as he did so.  When he came into the drawing room, he was met by his wife, Sarah, who looked a bit stretched thin, if he was being honest.  He had come used to her looking tired every now and again, she was pregnant with their first child after all, but the expression on her face now confirmed something more than mere fatigue.

“John, love, you’re just in time for dinner,” she took his arm, “Mother’s just in with your guest. Mister Holmes? They’re already sitting, waiting for you.”  Her voice was thin, but she seemed to be doing her best not to sound as harried as she looked.

“He made it then,” John couldn’t help smiling brightly at this; he had been terribly eager to meet him.  He was somewhere between shock and delight when they entered the dining room, and the young man seated at the far end of the table was, in fact, the one he had passed at the train station that afternoon.  He was smoking, apparently unconcerned with the discomfort it was causing John’s mother-in-law, but at the moment, John couldn’t be overly concerned by that. “Mister Holmes, I’m glad to see you’ve arrived well.”  He broke from Sarah to shake Sherlock’s hand, which Sherlock appraised a moment before shaking it once and returning to his pipe. 

“I noticed you at the train station,” said John.

“And I noticed you, _Doctor_ Watson.”  His voice was wonderfully deep, unexpectedly so, as he seemed quite young, though he was twenty-six if his letters were to be believed.  John itched to hear him read some of his work.  He hastened to his seat, face beaming with admiration. 

“Sorry,” he started distractedly, and in the meantime heard Sarah’s chair drag along the carpet. He realized, with some shame that he had forgotten to pull the chair out for her, but he dismissed the worry and directed his attention back to Sherlock.  “But, I don’t believe I ever told you I was a doctor. Did Sarah tell you?”

There was tut from the other side of the table, this from Madame Sawyer, and Sarah spoke on her mother’s behalf.  “Mister Holmes seems to be talented at figuring people out,” she said carefully.  “He puzzled out that mother’s reflux had been acting up, and that we’re having a girl just by looking,” she explained, her voice still a bit thin. 

“Remarkable,” was John’s only response.  Sherlock knocked the ash from his pipe onto the table cloth, and Madame Sawyer gave a mortified gasp, which was cut short as Sherlock began talking.

“Do you think so? And, for the record, I don’t ‘puzzle out.’ I simply observe what others are too blind to see as obvious. ”

“Of course it’s remarkable! And your writing as well, my God, you must be brilliant,” John could hardly contain the excitement in his voice.  Sherlock was already much more than he had expected.

“How old are you, Mister Holmes,” Sarah’s tone attempted levity despite Sherlock’s slight barb.  She wasn’t accustomed to dealing with anyone who seemed so disinterested in her as whole, and she kept trying to redirect the conversation to things she was more familiar with.

“Sarah, it’s rude to ask people’s ages, dear,” Madame Sawyer had always been very proper when it came to manners.  Though her expression suggested she had bitten into a lemon and said plenty about whether or not she felt Sherlock actually deserved to be graced with them.

“Twenty,” he answered, and John very nearly spit out the food he had been chewing.

“You said you were twenty-six in your letters. Your work is…” he was at a loss, “well, it’s… exceptional for someone of twenty-six, let alone someone as young as twenty.”

“Precisely. I don’t enjoy being pre-judged. I didn’t want you patronizing me before we ever had the chance to meet.”  Sherlock ate his food with gusto, the kind which only came to those who knew starvation, and which was obviously appalling to John’s wife and mother-in-law.  John had to give them credit though.  Sarah tried to keep up a semblance of conversation, but gave up once Sherlock denied her request to hear him read.  When she pressed him, he informed her that unlike most of the talentless poets she was acquainted with, he did not fancy sharing his work with the untrained ear.  The meal was mostly silent after that exchange, though John couldn’t keep his eyes from Sherlock for long.  He was absolutely captivating, and despite his uncultured manner, John couldn’t help feeling impossibly drawn to him.  He knew he should be put off, really he should.  Sherlock had insulted his wife and her family just over the course of dinner—he hadn’t even bothered to take his coat off or wash before they ate— and had it been anyone else, perhaps John would have thrown them out right away, but not Sherlock Holmes.  They had only just really met and he already wanted to know about him in every way possible.      

*

Sherlock Holmes had made his way for the John Watson’s address as soon as he got off of the train.  The journey had been a tedious one, but he had enjoyed the scenery immensely.  It was mostly the people that had been tedious.  He had very little interest in anyone who wasn’t in some way outside of the norm.  He had chosen to write to John Watson in the first place, primarily because he had been a bit on the fringe when compared to other poets.  He was unconventional in that he had never been wholly absorbed by writing, but still seemed to turn out, very decent, publishable work.  The masses seemed keenly attuned to his writing.  Nevermind that his last published work had hardly been worth reading.  On the whole, John Watson was very good at what he did, and Sherlock thought if anyone would be willing to consider helping him in his own endeavors in writing poetry, John would be the one to do it.

It only made sense that he go to John rather than have him come to him.  Neither one of them had known what the other looked like, but they had addresses and that was enough to be getting on with.  He took his time getting to the house, though he had assumed that the man he had passed leaving the station—attractive, blond, a dignified set to his shoulders, though a bit short—leaving the station was his mentor, he saw no reason to rush things along.  He wound his way through the streets, observing, and in some cases interacting with the homeless of the city, which he wasn’t quite used to seeing.  He came from the countryside, and things were largely quiet and boring, which was why he had taken off to travel for a bit once before.  Mycroft had protested bitterly, of course, but he hadn’t cared and had set out on his own anyway.  However, he had quickly run out of means of supporting himself and had been forced to return home before he was had gotten very far.  Being in the city was exciting, and his mind had immediately set about spinning lines of poetry.  His mind was always going on like that, it scarcely ceased.

He had the misfortune of reaching the house before John Watson, and when he had asked for him, he had instead been subjected to what amounted to idle prattle by the wife and mother.  He immediately began making easy deductions about them, which seemed to shut them up for longer than his declination to “have a wash” had upon arrival.  He simply wanted to get right to business, and why should things like washing or resting interfere with that?

*

John would have waited as long as was necessary for Sherlock to settle in and become comfortable before pressing him with any real heat about his work, but it seemed that Sherlock, himself, was impatient to get out and explore only the next day.  Of course, John couldn’t help but indulge him.  He had met many very intelligent men in his time, and a few on the brink of genius, but none were like Sherlock.  He talked in depth about writing, not so much his own work, he seemed disinclined at all avenues to speak about his own work, but the processes, the life that fueled it, his experiences, Sherlock talked about all of those in great and animated detail.

“Your last book,” he started as they strolled along the tree lined promenade, “it wasn’t good enough.”

“Oh?”  John was amused by the way Sherlock’s eyes seemed to light with a mischievous glint when he spoke about any writing that wasn’t his own, like he knew something that the authors themselves didn’t know.  And given what John had seen of him since he arrived, it was very likely that he did.  Sherlock observed things about people, about whole places, even, that John would never dream of being able to perceive.

“Pre-marital garbage. I can’t believe you’d even consider publishing it.”

“No, love poems,” John defended.  His last book had come out just before he wed Sarah, and he remembered being very happy in those days, almost deliriously so.  Indeed, many of his poems had featured her persona and had been a great filter for his emotions at the time.

“Love doesn’t exist,” Sherlock was nearly walking backwards at this point, his attention focused on John, though never entirely.  He seemed to focus on a great many things at once no matter what he was doing or saying.  John didn’t see how such an impossibly tall, thin man could make walking look so easy.  He would have expected him to be clumsy or gangly, but he wasn’t.  “Whatever it is that binds families, husbands, wives, mothers to their children, it isn’t love. Perhaps it’s sentiment of some sort, a…” he ran deliciously long fingers through unruly curls, “nostalgia, perhaps, but not love. Love, John, must be reinvented.”

John wasn’t sure what to think of such an idea.  Surely he loved Sarah, loved their unborn child, but Sherlock made it sound intriguing all the same.  He said it like he was on fire, like he intended to ‘reinvent love’ the moment he got the chance, and given his poetry, John wasn’t so sure that he couldn’t.  He had a strangely domineering presence, which made John want to go along with whatever he told him, despite his better judgment.   

 

John was reading over some of Sherlock’s poetry before bed when Sarah came in and draped her arms over his shoulders, her cheek pressed to his.  He reached up to hold her hand and read the last few lines of the piece he had been studying out to her.

 _Nothing, if not the night, could hold him so violently, and he could not let go._  
I have seen with eyes that the gods, those beings which do not exist,  
yet hold such power, could only bestow.  
And I cannot let go.   

“It’s brilliant, isn’t it?”  He could hardly take his eyes from the page, even as he spoke to her.

“Brilliant? He certainly isn’t like any of the other poets you’ve talked with before. I’ve never really met anyone like him before.”  Her tone was a bit clipped and she drew back from John just a little as she carried on, “He’s…difficult, isn’t he? I don’t really see why he should stay here. One of your friends might put him up?”

“No, no there’s no one else like him, is there? I can’t imagine the way his mind must work,” John, in his awe, had mostly chosen to ignore the latter end of her commentary.

Sarah patted him and waddled her way to bed.  She had never been particularly interested in writing, but then he hadn’t exactly married her for her interest in his work as a writer or doctor.  She was lovely, and full of life, and had been all he could have asked for in a wife, but her view of the world was limited to what she had learned from her tutors and parents as she had grown up, and there was little she could offer him in terms of his own work. 

*

Sherlock took the evening to investigate the house a little more closely, particularly the drawing room, which was full of all sorts of odds and ends, but where he was most interested in the books.  He read often and completely, which meant that he had taken to tearing the pages out of books as he finished them.  He would read, absorb, tear, and it was no different for him in the Sawyers’ room of books than it had been in his quaint little family home in the country.  The only difference here was that books were easily and readily accessible.  He didn’t have to steal them in order to read them.  Anyway, he couldn’t bring himself to be overly concerned about whether such a wealthy family might protest his method of reading; they could always buy more books.

When the master of the house came in (deduced by the size of the ring on his left pinky finger and how recently his coat had been laundered), Sherlock was sitting with his knees tucked up to his chest in one of the fine wing-backed chairs of the room, half the contents of the book he had been reading scattered about the foot of the chair in a paper-y massacre.  He seemed alarmed by Sherlock’s presence, and extremely impatient for a man who had clearly spent the last several years tolerating the grizzly snores of a wife he had originally thought would be quiet and dainty, but had proved otherwise after their union.    

*

John had climbed into bed next to Sarah, having forced himself away from Sherlock’s writing upon pleading from Sarah for him to come feel the baby kick.  He was presently curled next to her, his face and hand pressed against her stomach, when they were suddenly interrupted by her father.  He looked absolutely thunderous.

“How is it that you have company here, without my permission,” he all but roared.   It was times like this that John resented very much having to have left his own estate and joined with that of Sarah’s family.

“With all due respect, how is it that I might consider this my home if I can’t even put up a guest when I feel like it,” he pointed out, straightening just a bit, though his hand was still drawing lazy circles on Sarah’s stomach.

“A delinquent! That’s what you’ve brought here! When you see him, you can tell him he is welcome to replace what he’s damaged.” 

John had never gotten on very well with Sarah’s father, and while he was used to a certain amount of abuse concerning the man, he was in no mood for it at the moment.  Sherlock was odd, he’d grant him that, other people didn’t understand his genius, but he wouldn’t have him insulted.

“Tell him yourself,” was his pointed retort.  He saw it as an opportunity to both save face as a man and get under his father-in-law’s skin. 

“He’s gone,” was the reply, which was quite the opposite of what John had hoped to hear. 

John was out of bed in an instant, rushing about the room and collecting enough clothing to make himself decent before he pushed past Sarah’s father, “You people are heartless! He’s nowhere to go,” he exclaimed before heading out. 

To his dismay, it was raining, and he ran down the street almost frantically in search of Sherlock.  He didn’t have to go far.  He found him huddled on the nearest park bench, the lapels of his long overcoat turned up against the rain, dark curls plastered to his forehead as he scribbled lines into an old, leather bound notebook.


	3. Proposition

After a little negotiating with an old friend, John was able to secure a place for Sherlock to stay, at least until he figured things out at home. It was an old flat, attic space that writers and artists would have ordinarily rented out to do their work, and John had managed to rent it out for a little less than half of what was normally asked. It paid to be at least moderately well known; it tended to give him a little bit of influence.  
Once they were inside, John lit up a fire and ordered Sherlock to strip out of his soaking clothes, which he did without argument.  
“I’m sorry, it’s only for a little while,” he assured him, as he wrapped a blanket around Sherlock’s shoulders and then proceeded to hang his clothes to dry.  
“It’s fine, this is fine.” Sherlock had pulled a desk and chair that had been shoved into the far corner of the room nearer to the center of it before folding himself turk-style and sitting a little way from the fire, blanket still draped over his shoulders. “Do you love her,” he prompted suddenly.  
John couldn’t help but give him a mildly amused glance from over his shoulder. For someone who didn’t believe love existed, he talked a lot about it. But then, he supposed few poets could go through life without contemplating the emotion in some respect. Perhaps the fact that Sherlock rejected it as a legitimate emotion pointed to just how much he actually did think about it.  
“Of course,” he continued to lay and hang Sherlock’s things by the fire.  
“Is she intelligent?”  
John hesitated for a moment and turned to face Sherlock as he finished hanging his shirt up, “Not in the conventional sense, no. Not so clever as you,” he joked good naturedly. “But in her own way.”  
“Does she understand you?”  
John wasn’t sure he understood where this line of inquiry was going, and maybe he should have stopped it at the start, but Sherlock had him pinned with those incredibly…non-color eyes, blue and green and amber and swirling with such knowing. It was like he had seen the whole of human condition with those eyes. They sent electric through him, and it seemed futile to resist him. John could hardly help himself. “No, no, I don’t think she really does most of the time.”  
“Then all she can give you is sex.” Sherlock’s expression was a matter-of-fact one, and John couldn’t help but laugh a little at his conclusion.  
“We all do like sex, don’t we?” He loved Sarah, that alone meant more than just sex, didn’t it? Not wanting to dwell too much on such a thought, he shook his head disbelievingly, “I’ll come back tomorrow to check on you,” he told him. John gave a quick look around to make sure everything was in order, and he tried not to notice the faintly amused look on Sherlock’s face. “Goodnight.”  
*  
No one had come after Sherlock before. He had been thrown out of a great many places, but no one had ever followed him out. When the Master Sawyer had tossed him out, he hadn’t been especially surprised, and while he had no real plan in place to deal with the circumstance, he had believed that it would be the end of his association with John Watson. His family hadn’t liked him from the start. Nothing new there, most people didn’t like him. They were too busy burying their heads in complacency to care for what he had to say. John hadn’t been that way though, not exactly. While he was mired in sentiment to an almost revolting degree, he did at least try to grasp the things that Sherlock put to him. Despite this, he hadn’t expected John to follow him, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t rather pleased to see him when he did, especially given that it had been pouring the rain.  
Once he was set up in the flat—a desk, a bed, and small fire place—he couldn’t resist the urge to press John a bit. He simply didn’t understand why such a man, a well-respected poet and doctor, a revolutionary no less, would find himself content with the easy, dull life he currently led. Sherlock had read all of his work, admired some of it, especially his earlier pieces, the ones written quite some time before he had, like so many potentially great poets, surrendered to sentiment. It was a fatal flaw when it came to getting at what was really important. The whole world needed to be experienced, as much as possible, not just a piece of it, and complacency was the barrier to doing just that. John Watson had fallen into that trap and Sherlock wanted to shake him out of it, startle him awake so that his eyes opened fully to the world.  
“John!” He called to him from the window, all the clothes the man had just spent time hanging for him, along with his underclothes, gathered in his arms. John was in the street and looked up at him, as did most of the surrounding occupants of the nearby flats. Sherlock grinned wickedly and began raining his clothes down on John article by article, “Wake up, John!” This, of course, left him completely naked as he stood on the window ledge, exposed to all passersby as he chuckled at what he decided would be the first of many endeavors to rid John Watson of his complacency. John, clearly startled by the act seemed to channel his bewilderment by catching what he could of the clothing, and Sherlock waved at him before stepping back through the window. Yes, he would force John’s eyes open whether he liked it or not. He couldn’t have a mentor that had become comfortable and lacked conviction. Someone like that wouldn’t drive him to be better, but would rather drive him to a similar state of mind-numbing complacency, which seemed a fate worse than death to him. He refused to allow his work to become boring.  
*  
John certainly hadn’t expected Sherlock to toss his clothing at him from four stories up, and though he was a bit taken aback by the sudden appearance of a stark naked Sherlock standing above him, he knew it wasn’t the only reason his breath had hitched in his lungs. It certainly seemed the sort of radical thing Sherlock would do, at least from what he knew of him. Who knew if there was any reasoning behind it? Sherlock seemed to do things on a whim, and it delighted John to a certain extent. There was a youthful riskiness to him that John felt he had lost some time ago. Sherlock made him want to recapture it. He caught his clothing, the best he could, as Sherlock tossed it out. They were probably the only clothes he had, so John would return them to him in the morning. He watched as Sherlock’s sinewy form climbed back through the window, and a pang of desire shot through him. He considered himself a practical man, but beauty in all its forms had long been a weakness of his, and Sherlock Holmes was, if nothing else, beautiful. He gathered the clothing he had failed to catch and tamped down his desire before he headed back home.

 

“You can’t really expect my father to tolerate vandalism, can you John? I thought Mister Holmes was rather rude! He was putting a strain on things here, and upsetting my parents. What else was he supposed to do?”  
John was pacing back and forth while Sarah lay in bed, complaining of fatigue. She was due within the next few weeks, so he wasn’t surprised. It had been nearly a week since they had thrown Sherlock out. John was only just now willing to discuss the matter, as he had been quite cross at the whole family when he had returned from getting Sherlock set up.  
“Christ, Sarah. You have no idea what ‘a strain’ is, do you? He isn’t like us. He isn’t fortunate. His brilliance gets overlooked because he was unfortunate enough to be born into poverty. He’s never had anything, and your father threw him out. There’s no sense of charity about any of you.”  
Sarah seemed slightly cowed by this, and John thought maybe he had gotten through to her.  
“I don’t disagree with what my father did. It is his house after all. And besides that…you’re different when he’s around,” she hesitated a moment and adjusted herself on the bed, “You…can’t keep your eyes from him. It’s like I’m not even in the room!”  
John threw his hands up, exasperated, “And I suppose it means nothing that I’m your husband? Other people don’t understand him, Sarah. What do you expect of him? And of course I’m bloody different! None of you lot can get on with him, so I have to be to make up for it.” He gave a growl of general frustration and left the room then, ignoring her protests at his exit. Things had become stressful since Sherlock had arrived, and perhaps he was…unconventional, but he couldn’t just toss him out. He didn’t see why Sarah couldn’t understand that Sherlock couldn’t just be abandoned. Sherlock was completely, undeniably brilliant, and every time he was near, John’s own lust for life and the need to write took hold of him. He had never had so much conflict with Sarah before. Normally they got on very well, largely by virtue of the fact that they never talked about anything of great depth, but that wasn’t so important. Sarah usually had a pleasant, and on occasion, even joking nature, and he had been attracted to those qualities when he had first begun courting her. She had always been a loving wife, a good wife, and until now, he had very few complaints of her. The marriage was usually an easy one.  
When he left Sarah, he decided to take Sherlock along to a reading. It wasn’t uncommon for poets of his station or better to gather together and learn from one another by listening to readings of their latest pieces, and besides that, it helped to keep him from having to return home too soon. It would be good for Sherlock to have the experience and John couldn’t resist the chance to show him off a bit as well. They were sitting at a long table, Sherlock’s chair pulled close to his as he muttered insults about the others’ work into John’s ear. Sherlock didn’t seem at all amused by the other poets, and declared more than once his boredom. John had ordered them each an absinthe to try and stave off Sherlock’s impatience with the situation, but it didn’t seem to help his condition.  
The poet heading the reading for the evening was named Anderson, and he was currently looking over the piece Sherlock had submitted at the beginning of the night (since he refused to read his work aloud, a copy had been passed around to everyone at the table). Anderson had a rather pinched, narrow looking face, that even John took issue with on a good day. He didn’t care much for the man’s work himself, but it was generally agreed that he was a decent writer in his own respect.  
“It’s…promising,” Anderson offered, “But there’s a rather juvenile attempt to shock present. Not only that, but the whole piece comes off as a bit…presumptuous, like you think you know more than you possibly could.” Anderson looked up at the others like he expected them to agree with his statement. John was sure that was exactly what he expected.  
“And were you shocked,” Sherlock’s tone had taken on a dangerous, challenging edge.  
“Well, no,” Anderson, it seemed, would have been unimpressed by anything Sherlock would have written. He had seemed displeased by his presence for a majority of the evening. John thought it might have something to do with Sherlock’s generally disheveled appearance. The men they sat with were bourgeoisie, never a hair out of place.  
“Then why would you assume that I intended for you to be,” Sherlock retorted snappily.  
“That’s not really the point,” Anderson looked as though he was ready to carry on criticizing, and John thought it might be best to put a stopper on things before they got out of hand.  
“He doesn’t really like discussing his work. Let’s go on, shall we?”  
Sherlock downed what was left of his absinthe and ordered another drink. The next poet to read was Dimmock, and he started in with a piece about the perils of slovenliness. Sherlock seemed to have had enough by this point, and stood, slamming a hand on the table in the process.  
“Garbage! All of it, authentic garbage! I think I’m growing dumber by the second. Don’t read another word,” Sherlock climbed onto the table then, careless of the destruction he was causing in the process, and tramped across to where Dimmock was. He grabbed the sheet of paper from the stunned Dimmock’s hand and proceeded to eat it.  
Despite, having tried, albeit feebly, to stop Sherlock’s antics, John couldn’t help finding this a bit funny, and it took some effort to quell the beginnings of his laughter. He supposed this was proof that he was a little drunk.  
Outraged, Anderson stood as well, slamming both hands onto the table as he did so, “Stop this! Get out now!”  
Sherlock whirled around to face Anderson, knocking drinks aside as he did so, and crossed half the table before John’s walking cane (one he used out of style rather than necessity) caught his attention. He grabbed it before John had the chance to stop him, and moved across the table at Anderson with it as though he were engaging him in a duel. Anderson, of course, backed away, and Sherlock only pursued.  
“Careful,” John warned, noting that the situation was escalating a bit more than anyone was willing to tolerate by this point. Anderson was being backed steadily by Sherlock, who had jumped from the table and was going at him with violent intensity. He was swinging hard enough that John could hear the air rushing around the cane as he went. Sherlock’s eyes had that wild look about them again, and John got up to stop him, Anderson shouting abuse at the both of them as John caught Sherlock’s arm, and moving it to his waist, managed to half steer, half drag him from the building.  
Once they were out in the air, John couldn’t help dissolving into a fit of giggles. Sherlock’s near insanity and the looks of horror on the faces of the other writers as Sherlock ate Dimmock’s poetry had been priceless. Sherlock, joined him in giggling and they headed back towards the flat together, not bothering to attempt containing their laughter as they went. Drunkenness and the dark of night lent them an excuse to be carefree, not that Sherlock ever seemed to care much about what others thought to begin with.  
“John, let’s help each other,” John wouldn’t admit it, but he loved it when Sherlock spoke his name. His voice was so incredibly velvety that it almost sent shivers down his spine. They were back in the loft now, both stripped of their coats and sitting close on the tiny bed. John didn’t normally smoke, but Sherlock had convinced him to share his pipe, which really hadn’t taken as much convincing as it would have if he had been entirely sober.  
“And what do you propose, Mister Holmes,” John chuckled as though he had just made a joke, and took a final puff of Sherlock’s pipe before they finished with it.  
“We’ll go away together. When I was younger I went out on my own for a bit. I traveled as far as I could before I ran out of money and had to return home. But,” he placed one of those impossibly long fingered hands on John’s shoulder, “while I was out, I realized… I realized I needed to experience everything, absolutely everything. Everything in the world, everything my body had to offer, to be everyone in the world. I wanted to cross the sea, go to Africa or India, I want to see it all, John. I have to see it all. It’s vital to me. We’ll take as much as we can from one another and when there’s nothing left, we’ll part ways.” He looked so passionate, like he would cease to exist if this one wish wasn’t fulfilled. It moved John, but he was, even drunk, a practical man.  
“You mean to say I help you by supporting you and you revitalize me,” John looked at Sherlock like he had uncovered the trick of a mischievous child, a gentle incline of his head and raised brows.  
Sherlock searched him for a moment, John on the verge of falling into those eyes of his, “No, John,” there was an undercurrent in his tone, “not altogether…” Sherlock leaned in and kissed him to place emphasis on his meaning. It astounded John, though perhaps it shouldn’t have, that Sherlock would be so willing to offer his body as part of the deal. Sherlock drew back for a moment, John guessed, to gauge his reaction, and when he realized it hadn’t been a negative one, leaned in again and placed another kiss against John’s lips.  
John’s affinity for beauty had long been an Achilles heel for him, and having Sherlock—someone he had found impossibly beautiful from the moment he had first laid eyes on him, thrusting himself on him—was something he couldn’t bring himself to pass on. He opened his mouth against Sherlock’s, allowing his tongue entry, still able to taste the absinthe there. Sherlock was passionate in his kissing, deep, and relentless, and when they parted for air it was only long enough for Sherlock to ease John back on the bed. His fingers slid into Sherlock’s hair, working through the curls in a way he had wanted to do since he had seen him nude in the flat’s window. He arched into the kiss, and was left breathless when Sherlock moved to kiss under his jaw. Sherlock was gorgeous, beyond gorgeous, and John would have kept on letting him be that way for the rest of the night if Sherlock hadn’t bitten down on the skin between his neck and shoulder. It wasn’t really the biting that did him in; he could have very easily gone along with Sherlock biting him anywhere he pleased if the sudden shock of it hadn’t brought him, momentarily, to his senses.  
“Sherlock-stop, no, stop.” He pushed him away from where he was working his way down his chest, “I have to go, really. I’m sorry, just… I’ll be back to check on you.” He slid out from under him and grabbed his things before stumbling to the door. He had a wife. Sarah. He was married to Sarah Sawyer, and their baby was going to be due any day. He had to keep repeating that to himself all the way home in order to get the arousal that Sherlock had elicited to die down before he got there.  
*  
Sherlock ran his hand along the flushed skin of his chest and neck as he lay back on the bed. John had run out so suddenly, Sherlock was certain it had been the fault of his wife, of sentiment. It was disgusting. Still, he might have been more upset if he hadn’t been so sure John would come back to him. He had responded well, so well, in fact, that Sherlock doubted he would be able to go very long at all before needing to come back for his next fix. Kissing John had been invigorating, and he intended to make sure that John knew that he had no problem giving him the attention his wife clearly wasn’t. He wasn’t at all ashamed by what he had done, and he was certain that while John was probably disturbed at the moment he had run out, he would soon realize that their relationship could be mutually beneficial in more ways than one.  
He sighed heavily and got up to sit at the desk he had prepared for himself when John had first brought him to the flat. The urge to write had come to him, and he never denied himself when the urge hit him. There were so many words plastering themselves against his skull at the moment that he thought he might explode if he didn’t get them all out on paper. He hunched over the desk, blanket over his shoulders, and wrote feverishly with a pencil that had long since needed replacing. It was so short his fingers seemed to have to double on themselves for him to use it.


	4. (Un)Faithful

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a warning there is a teeny tiny section near the end of this chapter that could be considered non-con/dub-con, but I wasn't sure, and it isn't particularly graphic, so I was reluctant to tag it as such. It's about the fourth or fifth paragraph from the end if you really just want to skip it and keep reading from there. Other than that, I hope you enjoy!

John’s kiss with Sherlock stuck in his memory like rhyming verse.  He couldn’t have forgotten it if he had wanted to, and worse still, he wasn’t sure that he _did_ want to.  Sherlock had made him a tempting offer, and he was having difficulty putting it from his mind.  The prospects were exciting.  He hadn’t traveled, except to flee persecution, since before he had married, much less in the company of another poet—a beautiful and intelligent one at that.  He _did_ love Sarah.  He was sure of that.  It was just that Sherlock was a temptation too great for him to resist completely.  His brilliance attracted John like a moth to flame, and like a moth, John gave in to the desire to be near the light within the week.  Repeatedly.  They went on as usual, of course, talking and reading and writing poetry, but there were some nights where John would either come home excessively late and at least a little drunk or simply not at all.  However, John maintained that he loved Sarah, and though he was still married to her, they argued with increasing frequency or spent their nights in silence.   And in the midst of it all, Sherlock was John’s personal drug of choice.  When he left him, he only wanted to be nearer to him again, to hear more of his shocking revelations on human nature or succumb to his touch, and yet, despite this, he still found himself desiring the stability that was Sarah.  He liked having a wife, he liked that normalcy, and he had no overriding desire to leave her.

It happened that John was out with Sherlock on the evening that Sarah went into labor.  They were in an extremely smoky bar, sitting close, drinking and talking.  Sherlock had spent the first part of the night dissecting people for John’s amusement—that woman was clearly desperate for a husband, as she was pregnant with her master’s child; and that man was trying out a new hair tonic and hoping to attract the attention of a much younger woman—things that John would never have thought about just from looking at a stranger.  However, that dissolved the more Sherlock drank, and he instead decided to move into another of his wild-eyed diatribes.

“Understand, John!”  His voice was a passionate rumble, and it lit a fire in John’s gut.  “The world, the whole of it, I want to understand everything. I want to write what has yet to be written about…about all of it. Humans settle for complacency so readily, before their eyes are ever opened to possibility, to experience, they stop thinking! I want to _make_ them think, John!”  Sherlock knocked back the rest of his absinthe and covered John’s hand with his own.  He was already invading John’s space, and since John had long given up his struggle to resist the temptation that was Sherlock Holmes, he thought that if Sherlock kept saying his name like that, he wouldn’t need to concern himself with the complacency of the rest of the world for very much longer.  Even now, he couldn’t help staring at the way his full lips moved when he spoke.  Sherlock could do terribly wicked things with that mouth, and John felt filthy as he recalled them.  His tongue darted out between his own lips, and he was rather unfortunately shaken from his fantasy when he was tapped on the shoulder by one of the bar staff.

“Doctor Watson?”

John was a little irritated by the interruption, as he had been considering just how risky it would be to spend two consecutive nights with Sherlock, “Yes?” 

Sherlock seemed amused by John’s irritation, but he stayed silent.

“Ah, sorry to disturb you sir, but I was asked to inform you that your wife has gone into labor,” the staffer gave Sherlock a sidelong look and backed off.

John was already stumbling about, trying to pull his coat on and slide out from behind the table at the same time.

“Where are you going,” Sherlock seemed honestly shocked and John managed to give him a look of incredulity before he realized that Sherlock probably placed no importance on the birth of a child.

“I must go to her,” he explained, snatching up his hat, “I must.”  He hesitated for a moment, “We can’t, Sherlock, not now,” and he was out the door, scarcely thinking of anything but Sarah and the coming baby.

By the time John made it home, the baby was tucked into its bassinet and Sarah was resting in bed.  He peeked in on the baby, smiling warmly before he climbed into bed next to his wife.  “She’s beautiful,” he told her as he wrapped his arms around her.      

“You were out with him, weren’t you,” she asked softly, and she made no move either toward or away from him.   “I can smell the smoke and drink on you. You only drink when you’re with him.” 

John was at a loss and withdrew his arms from around her, “Sarah… I came as soon as I heard. I’m here now.”  He had been with Sherlock, of course, and most probably would have stayed with him if not for the bar staffer.  It made sense that Sarah would be hurt.  Even though he wasn’t allowed in the birthing room with her, he was sure she probably would have liked for him to be outside.  He shut his eyes and sighed deeply as he tried to sober his thoughts a little more.

*

Sherlock was writing feverishly by the time John came to check on him four days after he had left him alone in the bar.  Being around John had done good things for his creative processes, and he had scarcely stopped writing since John had left him.  It was a miracle he even knew what day it was.

“Sherlock, we need to talk.”

“In a minute,” he put up his free hand and continued to scribble in his notebook.  He couldn’t be interrupted when he was in the middle of his work. 

“Sherlock—“

“ _In a minute_ , John,” he repeated himself sharply and John fell silent again.  Sherlock tugged at his curls, which were all over the place from where he had done it so many times before.  It was a habit he had when he was on the verge of great writing and the words just wouldn’t come.  He heard John shift behind him, and Sherlock couldn’t take it anymore.  He pushed away from his desk, toppling the chair over as he stood and turned, “I need air. I need to get out. Now. I can’t think like this,” he ran his hand through unruly curls again and searched the room for his coat before he found it on the other side of the bed and slipped into it.  He was halfway out the door before he realized John wasn’t following him, “Aren’t you coming?”  Two strides and he was in John’s personal space.

“Right, Sherlock, we need to talk.”  John took a small step back.

“That’s what I’m suggesting we do. However, I can’t think in here, so I’m suggesting we walk while we talk,” he clarified, and hooked his arm in John’s as he had done on other occasions when they strolled around the promenade.  “Come along, John.”

“No, no Sherlock. Look, you know…you know that I care a great deal for you,” John didn’t seem quite himself and Sherlock knit his brows together.

“I don’t see what relevance that has now.”

“You must go. Sherlock, I must send you away. Sarah has the baby, and people are beginning to talk.”  John’s mouth was set in a firm line and he dropped Sherlock’s arm so that he could look at him more fully.  “I don’t mean to send you away forever, of course, but right now we can’t work together. Sarah is under stress, and there’s been talk, at least by her parents of divorce, you know. Just, at least, until things cool off a bit,” he explained.  

Sherlock found this request, or demand as it were, rather funny.  In fact, he found it so funny that he couldn’t even be angry or upset about it.  He and John had spent more nights together than would ever have been considered decent, even for a faithless man, and here he was now telling him that his wife and child were of such concern to him that he needed to send Sherlock away.  It was hilarious.  He was still clinging to complacency, and Sherlock decided he would let him do that for the time being.  He could use the time to do more work without the distraction of flesh, which wasn’t always an entirely bad thing.

“If you wish it, John, I will return home. I’ll even go now,” he told him lightly.  He went to gather his things from the desk and stuffed them in the deep pockets of his overcoat before he returned to John.  “Au revoir,” he bent dramatically at the waist and grinned before he straightened and gave John one last kiss, his thumb stroking his jaw, before he was off, grinning madly and not giving John a chance to say more.  He could wait until they met again.

 

 

Sherlock hopped the first train he could home, and was ambling up the dirt path to his family home by the next morning.  He found it funny that he had so little family left that it really didn’t warrant being called a “family” home.  Mycroft was the only other person there.  When he came in the front door, he set about setting up his old work station straight away. 

Mycroft was just finishing breakfast and fixed him with a cool stare as he sipped his coffee.  “Are you back for good, dear brother?”

“There’s work to be done, Mycroft. Don’t bother me.”  Sherlock shifted his work table so that it faced the window and had the best advantage of sunlight before he sat down.

“Work, indeed. I’ve been running this place all alone, with no help from you in the last couple of months. And when you were here before there was hardly any help then either. Might I ask, has anything come of your dealings with this Mister Watson?”

Sherlock’s brows disappeared into his curls as he twisted around to face his brother, “Then you won’t be upset when there’s not much change.”  He turned back to his table, already writing again, “There was a bit of trouble.”

“Trouble? Sherlock, what sort of trouble,” Mycroft’s tone took on a more serious edge and was as close to concern as he was ever really capable of coming.

“Something about his wife and divorce. It isn’t important,” he waved his hand.  “Let me work, Mycroft.”

*

John spent a solid faithful month with Sarah and the baby before he found himself sharing a bed with Sherlock Holmes again.  He was almost ashamed at how easy it had been for him.  Sherlock had shown up, waited for him really, on the promenade one afternoon, his eyes bright and his expression smug.  John had tried to be furious with him.  He had written him after his sudden departure, he told himself, expressly to discourage Sherlock pulling any such stunts.  Despite being almost unbearably bored by Sarah’s endless cooing about the baby and the desire to rearrange furniture to create more space, and wouldn’t it be wonderful if John could set up a new practice since things had quieted a bit, he had told himself that things were going well.  He did love Sarah, and little Marie, of course he did, he had to, didn’t he?  They were his wife and child.  But the truth—the very buried truth—was that he hadn’t considered opening another practice since Sherlock had come into his life, and he certainly spent more time than was decent missing his presence in the city. 

When he had made the attempt to scold Sherlock for his recklessness, he had been laughed at.  And when he had turned to leave, still fighting valiantly to stay faithful to his family, Sherlock had gripped his upper arm, fixed him with an utterly shattering look, and whispered, far too close to his ear, that he had missed him, that he hadn’t slept for thinking of him.  John supposed that was really what had done it.  Sherlock was so completely unpredictable—one second ranting like a madman and insulting everyone in his wake, and the next whispering the sweetest things to him—that John really had been quite defenseless. 

When John stumbled home in the early hours of the morning, still able to feel the ghost of Sherlock’s lips on every inch of his body, he wasn’t surprised that Sarah was quietly livid.  She held Marie close and looked at him from behind a curtain of soft brown hair, her nightgown slipping off of her shoulder.  His wife and child together like that was a picture of pure loveliness, but rather than join them, he sat down at the vanity.

“Where have you been,” There was a soft rage in her voice and John couldn’t bring himself to look at her.  He didn’t even think he could come up with a good lie.  What could he say, really?  That he had missed dinner and spent the night buried so deeply in Sherlock Holmes that he still couldn’t see straight?  He didn’t think that would go over well.  Ultimately, Sarah answered for him.

“He’s back, isn’t he?”  She patted Marie’s back and shook her head, “Dammit, John.”  John could hear the frustration in her voice, and despite how low he felt about it, he knew he was caught in a storm of which he had no hope of escaping.  He couldn’t reassure her that it wouldn’t happen again, because inevitably, he knew it would.  It didn’t matter if he spent a month or a year away from him, the moment he showed himself again, John knew he wouldn’t be able to resist.  He, instead, stayed silent and got up to go bathe and dress himself properly.

 

 

“John, it’s pathetic the way you cling to her,” they were drinking alone in the flat, this time following an argument with Sarah about, of all things, wall paint.  He hadn’t cared about the nursery color, before or after Sherlock, and Sarah had shouted that maybe if she painted herself yellow John would bother paying a little more attention to what she had to say.  He had done his best to offer input, but he really could have cared less about the walls in a house that wasn’t even his own.  He had known that her frustration was his own fault, and he had tried to stay calm, but Sarah had continued to shout, and then Marie had begun to cry, and then he had begun to shout, and in the end, like every other time, he had left in his own selfish frustration.  He was trying to have his cake and eat it too; he knew it, but that didn’t mean he didn’t still want both. 

“I love her, Sherlock. I don’t like hurting her,” he explained, his words only just now beginning to slur a bit. 

“Then stop hurting her,” Sherlock told him snappishly.  “Leave her or stop feeling so sorry for yourself. Every time the two of you have an argument you come and drink yourself into a stupor, sleep with me, and then run weeping back to her side. It’s pathetic. You have no… conviction whatsoever. You’re faithless,” he took a final drink and slid his glass away, his gaze not meeting John’s.

“Sherlock, don’t be cruel. I can’t just leave her. I want to be faithful to you both. I’m trying my best, you know.”  It was amazing how easily John could fool himself into believing this whenever he wasn’t sober.

“Don’t expect me to be faithful to you,” Sherlock’s voice was flat, and John thought he seemed especially upset.  He was given to mood swings, one moment being excited beyond reason and the next ready to kill the next thing that moved, but this seemed a little different. 

John twisted so he could see Sherlock better from his place next to him on the bed, “Do you love me, Sherlock?”  John had never asked him outright before, and in fact had never really given too much thought to whether or not Sherlock had any real feelings for him, though he supposed somewhere that he must have hoped that he did, otherwise all of this was pointless.  He had temporarily forgotten Sherlock’s renunciation of love in his alcoholic haze.

There were a few beats of silence before Sherlock finally, rather sullenly, answered, “You know I’m very fond of you, John.”  He fixed John with a stare then, “Do you love me,” he asked, the same sullenness still coloring his voice.

John brought a hand up to touch Sherlock’s face, “Yes.”  Of course he loved Sherlock; he couldn’t help himself.  He had fallen for his deep, silken voice, wild eyes, and even wilder ideas without ever really meaning to.  He had never known anyone so enchanting.

“Then turn over,” Sherlock ordered.  John was a little startled by the sudden request, the unarguable command in his voice, but if it meant proving his love, he would do it to humor Sherlock.  The next thing he knew a length of cloth was being wound around his wrists, and though he protested at the suddenness of the act, Sherlock silenced him.

Eventually, he was bound and gagged, and stripped bare from the waist down, and when he felt Sherlock press into him, still clothed except for the undone laces on his trousers, he knew that Sherlock meant to humiliate or torture him.  He couldn’t quite workout which.  He wasn’t bothering to be gentle or to take his time making sure John was ready like he had in the past.  He had barely taken time to slicken himself with the jar of salve they had taken to keeping next to the bed before he started.  John grunted his discomfort, burying his face into the pillow and gritting his teeth, but he didn’t fight.  Sherlock could be wildly unpredictable, even in the best of times, and John felt that if this was what he needed to feel that John did, in fact, love him, then he could put up with it.  He could hear Sherlock’s breath coming in short, hot pants right next to his ear, and he wasn’t particularly surprised when he eventually felt Sherlock stiffen above him and then finally collapse bonelessly against his back.  It struck John how completely paradoxical and very nearly insane Sherlock was when he felt him press a kiss against John’s temple as he caught his breath again.

Sherlock had held John close for the remainder of the night, silently and tenderly tucked under John’s chin, a rather stark contrast to the frustrated way he had taken him earlier on.  Sherlock, for all of his radical ideals and apparent distaste for all things sentimental, seemed to need this sort of close physical comfort from time to time.  It never lasted for long, and John could hardly begin to fathom what prompted such unexpected tenderness in the young man, but he cherished the moments, and he did his best to provide what Sherlock needed without hesitation. 

The first rays of morning had barely peeked through the dusty window panes of the flat when Sherlock awoke suddenly from sleep.  This disappointed John slightly, as he had rather been enjoying pulling his fingers through the soft, unruly curls that ringed Sherlock’s head like a dark halo.  His backside still throbbed from the night’s abuses, but he hadn’t been able to sleep much despite himself, and so he had been taking advantage of Sherlock’s rare, unguarded, sleep induced silence.

“We have to leave, John. Now. We must leave now,” his voice was desperate, and he tilted his head to look up at John with equally desperate eyes.  This caught John off guard and he wasn’t really quite sure what to say.  There was his family to think of, and he hadn’t really properly prepared to travel, though Sherlock had talked of it frequently.  He opened his mouth to say as much, but one look into those brilliantly colored, desperate eyes, and John was undone.

“All right.”

            


	5. Departure

Sherlock had never been so affectionate.  John had agreed to leave with him, and indeed, they had left that same morning, setting out on foot over the countryside.  John hadn’t bothered to notify Sarah or anyone else, as he was wholly focused on lifting the desperation he so often found in Sherlock’s features.  They had packed the bare minimum of provisions and had set off for the coast, Sherlock convinced that he needed to see the ocean at least once before he died.  John was inclined to agree.  They traveled at a leisurely pace, stopping to enjoy a certain vista or compose a verse as the mood struck them.  Sherlock touched him almost endlessly, throwing his arms about John’s shoulders to kiss him when he said something Sherlock found particularly bright, wrapping an arm about his waist as they walked along together, or simply touching his shoulder.  It seemed that the countryside brought about an ease and freedom in Sherlock—in the both of them, if John was being honest, but especially Sherlock—that hadn’t been possible while they had been in the city. 

They slept under the stars, and told stories to one another by firelight—Sherlock’s stories were wild and imaginative, and he more often than not acted them out, using a long stick as a sword to act out parts where it was warranted—and laughed together.  John felt that some of the youth he had lost between marriage and the beginning of the revolution had returned to him, as he had never felt quite as joyous as he did at present.  They were both exceptionally happy, and that was perhaps proved by the fact that they neither drank themselves senseless nor engaged in the messy and seemingly fraught sex that often characterized their nights together while they were in the city.  Their nights were spent counting stars and naming constellations and they held each other frequently.  Sherlock would rest his head on John’s chest, and John would pull his fingers through his hair until they had fallen asleep together, covered by Sherlock’s overcoat.  Sarah hardly crossed John’s thoughts.

When they reached the ocean, Sherlock kissed him in such a way that John felt with complete certainty that he had done the right thing by bringing him there.  He watched as Sherlock stripped out of his coat and boots and slipped his braces from his shoulders before splashing his way into the surf.  He was beautiful and John thought he had never loved him more than he did at that moment.  It didn’t matter to him that Sherlock never told him that he loved him back; he was just glad to have been able to do something that made Sherlock so completely happy.  He was sullen so much of the time that seeing him really and truly pleased was a reward that John cherished, and he found himself making his way toward the water, where Sherlock met him with another unabashedly appreciative kiss.

They spent the remainder of the afternoon walking along the shoreline, and eventually they reached a small town, where John suggested they spend the night in the comfort of a hotel.  Sherlock was still in good humor and this made him agreeable, though being in a room seemed to make him remember the pleasures of the flesh and he offered himself to John sometime after dinner.  Of course, John couldn’t deny him. 

John climbed over a newly naked Sherlock and pressed kisses against his forehead and down his nose until he reached gorgeous, full lips, while Sherlock busied himself with unbuttoning John’s shirt.  Sharp as usual, Sherlock had him half undressed, before John really knew what was going on.  He chuckled breathlessly against the mouth of a smirking Sherlock, and pressed a kiss under his jaw before removing his trousers himself. 

They hadn’t been quite this intimate since leaving the city, but already John could sense the benefits of being so far from home.  Things were slower, less frantic, and the possibility that someone who mattered might find them together was considerably diminished.  Nothing mattered except the two of them.  They fit together like they were made for each other, their bodies sliding in unison, slick and warm and so incredibly close.  John’s breaths came hot and fast as Sherlock reached between them, gripping them both with one hand so that John’s rhythm was thrown by such perfect and direct contact.  Yes, leaving had benefits, one of them being that Sherlock seemed more willing than ever before to touch him like a lover rather than treating the physical aspects of their relationship with the same untamed, almost violent frenzy with which he did most everything else.  Hard and fast was something that could be appreciated from time to time, especially if one or both of them were especially frustrated, as often seemed to be the case, but this, this was much preferred.  John was tender at heart, and he liked a slower more deliberate pace. 

Sherlock slept soundly next to John, his limbs tangled with John and the bed sheets in an endearingly childish manner.  In their travel to the coast, John hadn’t thought much about Sarah, his combined happiness and preoccupation with Sherlock had kept her from his mind.  But now they had reached their destination, and for once he wasn’t so exhausted that he slept well past morning, and that left way for thoughts of Sarah to creep in on him.  He had abandoned her, hadn’t he?  He was sure she would have figured by now that he had left with Sherlock—he had admitted that Sarah’s intelligence was no match for Sherlock’s, but she wasn’t a dullard.  She seemed always to know when Sherlock was back. 

Guilt hit him in waves as he realized that he had once again lost himself to Sherlock’s charms.  He wouldn’t be surprised if Sarah left him after this, and he felt panicked at the thought.  He had let himself get too wrapped up in Sherlock, too lost in how wonderful it felt to be near such brilliance.  He felt irresponsible.  He had left Sarah without so much as even a decent lie to explain his absence; rather he had just disappeared without a word.  For all she knew he was dead or worse.  John carefully pulled himself from Sherlock, thinking that if he went to Sarah right away, he might have her forgive him.  She had been planning a trip for them, had thought that they needed to get away for a bit, so he thought he knew where she would be.  He gathered his clothes from where they had been discarded on the floor and started out while he was still in the process of dressing. 

*

Traveling to the coast with John had made Sherlock happier than he would have ever been willing to admit to himself.  He’d had affairs before, but he had never felt about any of them the way he did about John Watson.  There was something about John that made him _feel_ things.  However, this was something he refused to let himself think about for any length of time.  He’d had John to himself all this time and it was enough to make him feel nearly whole.  He hadn’t intentionally withheld sex during their excursion, but he hadn’t felt the need for it, and John hadn’t prompted him, so he had really given it little thought until they reached the hotel.  Being in such comfortable accommodations allowed him to realize what they had both been missing, and he had been more than willing to make up for it.  After which, Sherlock fell into a comfortable sleep tangled in a mass of sheets and John.  He always slept so soundly after being with him. 

When the door clicked shut the next morning, Sherlock awoke with a start to the noise and an empty bed.  He swore, after a brief survey of the room allowed him to deduce what exactly John had in mind.  Things had been going so beautifully.  Was his grip on the sentimental really so extreme that even now, in what Sherlock deemed his happiest hour in an age, John went running back to his sad excuse for a family?  Sherlock struck the mattress, his fingers curling against the empty space that John had previously occupied next to him.   After a moment more of contemplation, he ripped the bed clothes from his waist in a fury and threw his clothes on before hurrying after John. 

A train ride and three cities later Sherlock arrived—trailing behind John a considerable distance so as not to arouse suspicion—at a rather opulent hotel.  Clearly, the bill had been footed by the in-laws.  The leap from Sherlock’s bed to where John was headed next was a short one, and Sherlock forced away any emotions he had about the entire thing, negative or otherwise.  He was following for objective reasons, to see if John really was as unimaginatively dull as he seemed.  He watched as John disappeared into the room he had inquired about at the hotel’s front desk.  Sherlock lit his pipe.  He could burst in on John, but there was nothing that would come of it, so he decided to wait.  He imagined the expression on John’s face, if he was to burst in, might be something like shock and guilt mixed into one.  John seemed to be overcome by guilt almost more easily and more frequently than anything else.  Sherlock leaned against the wall and smoked.  He could hear Sarah, could hear John, could hear them moving against one another and giggling like school children, and he puffed furiously on his pipe, blowing smoke into the faces of passersby who had the nerve to side-eye him.  He wasn’t jealous.  There was nothing to be jealous of.  John had all but abandoned her for him, and it was only the ghost of what had been that drew him to her now.  Soon John would forget her entirely.  Once he came to his senses, had his last fill of her, they would leave together and carry on traveling.  Wasn’t John constantly telling him how he loved him?  If he believed it half as much as he said it, Sherlock felt that there was no reason for him to carry on this farce with Sarah.

*

Sarah buttoned her blouse as she sat on the edge of the bed, her hair tumbling over her shoulder in soft waves.  They had spent their first anniversary in this room, and John had been unsurprised to find her there, lounging provocatively across the bed, almost as if she had been waiting for him.  She had been so thrilled to see him when he slipped in that it seemed almost as though he hadn’t been gone at all.  They had kissed passionately, but she had disentangled herself from him in favor of dressing, stating that she was to have lunch with her mother who had come along as her chaperone.  A silence passed between them now, and she pulled her hair over her other shoulder as she finished with her buttons.

“Why do you prefer his company to mine,” she asked, her voice soft, but with an edge that John hadn’t expected.  He supposed he couldn’t have the good fortune of getting off so cleanly after leaving her alone for so long.

“I…” John didn’t know what to say to her.  Because Sherlock was brilliant?  Because he saw the world like no one John had ever met before?  Because he had never written better than he had while he was with him?  Their bodies he could love equally, but their minds…

“I’m going to be late,” Sarah said at length, and she stood to leave.  It took John a moment to follow after her, but he was shocked to find her standing face to face with Sherlock.

“Don’t worry, you can have him back quite soon. And only slightly damaged,” he caught Sherlock telling her rather cheekily.  He had that wild look in his eyes again; the tameness that had come with their travel to the coast all but vanished. 

“He’s coming back now,” Sarah told him resolutely, her chin tilted up. 

Sherlock blew smoke at her, and John heard himself say, “I’m going back with her.”  It had been automatic.  Sarah had looked at him imploringly and he felt he had to produce an answer, but he wasn’t sure what had prompted him to agree with her.  He hadn’t intended that exactly.  He hadn’t known what he had meant to do, but seeing Sherlock had shocked him, and Sarah had seemed certain in her claim.  John felt a bit helpless, like a slave to his own indecision.

In the meantime, Sherlock’s face crumpled into a look of untamed fury, and he tossed his pipe at their feet, which caused both John and Sarah to jump as he whirled and stormed away.  John was beginning to feel more helpless by the moment, the walls of domesticity once again closing in on him as Sherlock disappeared down the corridor.  John called after him weakly, but to no avail.  Sherlock had gone and Sarah grabbed his arm to tug John along with her to lunch.

 

Four days later John was on the train home, Sarah at his side, and his mother-in-law just across from them.  Sherlock hadn’t shown himself again, and though John worried after him, there wasn’t much he could do about it.  He had agreed to go back with Sarah, and since he had managed to wrong both her and Sherlock without trying very hard at all, he felt he owed it to them both to try and stick with the decision.  He needed to make things work with Sarah; she was his wife.  He settled himself with the thought that perhaps Sherlock had returned to his family home.  Sarah, at least was in good spirits, and he tried his best to match her mood, though he really didn’t feel up to it.  She held his hand, and leaned her head against his shoulder, and though her mother continuously cast him disapproving looks, Sarah seemed to be ready to forgive most of what had gone on between them in the last year or so.  John supposed he ought to be happy about that.  He had done quite a lot that wasn’t to be looked upon with favor.

Their train pulled into the station where they were to catch a connection and be on their way home again, and John carried their luggage out of the compartment and onto the platform to wait for the next train.

“I’m going just there to grab a paper,” he leaned over and kissed Sarah on the cheek as he indicated the opposite end of the platform.  He had fallen out of the loop with current events while with Sherlock; he seemed to care about little else than Sherlock and writing when they were together.  He paid for his paper and began to scan it for any major news he may have missed.  He probably would have carried on reading until he got back to Sarah and her mother if the train whistle hadn’t sounded. 

The train was slowly beginning pull out of the station, and John was nearly bowled over when his eyes met with a piercing mix of blue and green.  His heart lurched in time with the train as Sherlock, overcoat whipping around his lean frame, hung off of the edge of the train, his hand held out to him.  He looked like a vision, and John was headed toward him before he ever felt himself moving.  The next thing he knew, his hand was in Sherlock’s, and he had been pulled against his chest, Sherlock’s arm wrapped firmly around his waist, a knowing smirk on those beautifully full lips.


	6. If You Leave Me Again, I Won't Take You Back

Sherlock pulled John into the nearest empty car he could find.  He kissed him, long fingers coming up to tug at dusty blond strands.  He had intended on leaving John.  After his confrontation with Sarah he had decided he would leave John before he had the chance to really leave him.  If he wanted her, wanted to cling to his complacency, then Sherlock wasn’t going to beg.  But his mind worked without his ever really trying and he had worked out when John and his little family would be leaving and which trains they would be on without really meaning to.  He told himself he could go anywhere, and that one last look wouldn’t hurt.  He could watch as John was left behind.  His usefulness had reached its maximum potential, and passing him on the train would just solidify the fact that John was the one being left behind.  He hadn’t counted on John being so close, nor had he counted on him looking up at him. 

John half moaned his name as Sherlock pressed a kiss to that spot below his ear that always seemed to make him weak with need.  He smirked against John’s skin and started on working his trousers off.  “Not so loud, John,” he murmured as he lifted his shirt out of the way.  His lips were back over John’s, parting them with his tongue until he was certain that no matter what he did would have John breathless for him.  He reached past the thick cotton of John’s trousers to feel him, and grinned when his hips canted forward in response to the contact.  He was on his knees only moments later, John’s fingers twisted in his curls as he panted against him.

“Oh…Christ, Sherlock…please…” John managed breathlessly.  He was coming undone, and Sherlock wondered if he had managed to make him forget his wife yet.  He continued his ministrations with the single minded purpose of making John come so hard that he forgot every name, every word he knew except ‘Sherlock’.  His treatment was merciless, and even as John’s fingers tightened in his hair and his name caught, choking him, in John’s throat, he continued.  John eventually came, and in fact, he seemed not to be able to speak at all, and was hardly able to hold himself up when Sherlock pulled away, wiping his mouth and running his fingers through his completely wrecked curls.  If not for the wall, he was certain that John would have been little more than a heap on the floor.  Sherlock straightened his own person before finally assisting John, wiping him as well as he could with the kerchief he kept in the inner pocket of his coat before tucking him back into his trousers and buttoning him up again.  He then dropped into one of the seats in the compartment, leaving John still pressed against the door.

*

John managed to get his breath back and moved, though still somewhat shaky, to sit in the seat across from Sherlock.  It wasn’t quite the treatment he had expected upon joining him on the train.  It wasn’t unusual for Sherlock to become aggressive with him, but this had been different.  There had been an undercurrent of something John might have named as desperation, but that wasn’t quite it.  Sex with Sherlock always had a quality of desperation to it, which was often shared by John himself, but there had been something else mixed with this, maybe anxiety was more accurate than desperation.  John didn’t understand it, and when it came to Sherlock he wasn’t sure he was meant to.

“Are you upset about something,” he asked finally, when the silence had gone on too long for him to stand, and Sherlock’s eyes had seemed to make him dizzy.

“John,” he started, his eyes sliding shut, as they so often did when he found a topic particularly tiresome or unworthy of his attention.  Despite this, a shiver still skittered up John’s spine at hearing his name said with Sherlock’s usual velvet.  “Don’t be tedious.” 

“I’m not,” he defended after a moment.  Sherlock accused him of being dull so often that it hardly fazed him, but he wanted to talk about whatever it was that had prompted Sherlock to disarm him so.  “It’s just… you seem troubled, you know. And _that_ …” he didn’t quite know how to put it, “well… it wasn’t exactly the usual,” he tried tactfully.

Sherlock opened his eyes again after several long minutes, in which John decided it was better not to speak any more than risk irritating him further.  “You were going to leave with her.”  Sherlock’s tone was even and it came out as no more than a statement of fact.  John wasn’t sure what to make of such a statement, as it was certainly true, but Sherlock had given him nothing to work with.  He didn’t know which direction to steer the conversation.

“I’m here now,” he said at length.  He had been about to return home with Sarah.  He had hardly even looked for Sherlock once he had left, a feeble attempt to convince himself that he could, indeed, go back to a life prior to having met him if he never saw him again.  Of course, as soon as he had boarded the first train, he felt nearly suffocated at the prospect of returning home and setting writing aside again in favor of opening a new practice, of going back to such a tedious life, a life completely devoid of the vivid color that Sherlock brought into it, reckless though it may be. 

Sherlock scoffed.  “I thank you not to leave me nearly penniless so far from home again,” he stated.  He seemed unmoved by John’s words, the heated, passionate frenzy that had overcome him when he had initially locked them in the compartment, not so much as a ghost on his features now.  There was no point in pressing it further, as Sherlock seldom discussed anything that wasn’t to his liking, and John sighed heavily as he settled into his seat.  He had no idea where they were headed, but he supposed that with Sherlock it didn’t much matter.       

                                                                             *                                                        

“Why did you write to me,” John prompted one morning.  Sherlock was hunched over a writing desk, wrapped only in a blanket, as John had taken the morning to divest him of his clothing.  They had been holed up in a dingy, low-rent flat for nearly six weeks, and while they had both made leaps in their writing (Sherlock more so than himself) a bit of the glamor of running off with absolutely no plan had worn off.  This didn’t seem to bother Sherlock, and John wondered what kept him around at all.  He didn’t think of himself as particularly intriguing, and as Sherlock seemed always to need to be stimulated, it was a bit puzzling that he had tolerated him for this long.

Sherlock twisted in his chair and fixed John with a look of interest, “Because, John, I know _what_ to say, but you know _how_ to say. Simply put, I felt I could learn from you. You inspire my genius.” 

That took John aback, as he had always been under the impression that Sherlock thought little of nearly everyone’s work but his own, “So  you…”

“I’ve read all of your work, John. The instant I did, I felt you were to be the perfect mentor. I felt I had to know you. At least, your work prior to…well, clearly, you fell into a bit of dry spell with your more recent writings. Complacency is your mortal enemy.” 

It took John a moment to realize that Sherlock had meant that his work since marrying Sarah had been lacking, a feeling he had expressed on more than one occasion.  “You haven’t said her name since we went off to the coast together,” John pointed out.  “Sarah.”  In truth, he wasn’t sure that Sherlock had ever said her name, even in conversation about her, though those conversations were extremely rare.  “I was thinking of writing her,” he added.

“Really, that’s fascinating.”  Sherlock was hunched in such a way that might have made it seem like he was terribly focused on whatever he was writing, but John had spent enough time in his company by this point to know better.  Sherlock’s pencil was to paper, but it wasn’t moving.

“She should know, I think. That I didn’t mean to hurt her, not really.”  He hadn’t thought of her at all when he saw Sherlock on the train that day, and had only thought of her fleetingly since.  It occurred to him that he wasn’t certain if he really did love her anymore, or rather, he wasn’t certain that the love he retained for her was still as powerful (or if in fact it had ever been) as what he felt for Sherlock.  He wasn’t proud of the way he had handled things with her since he had engaged with Sherlock, and still he wasn’t proud that he had neglected her entirely until now.  Writing her, he decided, had to be done.

“Then write her,” Sherlock snapped, and stood, gathering his clothes in his arms before crossing to where John sat on a stool at the end of the bed, “But if you leave me again, I won’t take you back. I don’t need you. And I won’t be folly to your ridiculous and pathetic sentimental attachment. Only the supremely weak are so totally incapable of decisiveness,” Sherlock’s words hit him low and sharp like the end of a lash, and he had to bite the inside of his cheek very hard to keep from doing anything undignified as Sherlock stormed out on him.  As insensitive as Sherlock could be, for all of his denouncements of love and similar emotions, he had never said anything quite so cruel as that to him.

Sherlock sulked for days after that.  It had been a while since he had been on the receiving end of one of Sherlock’s sulks, and John supposed that he shouldn’t have been surprised that he was due for one now.  If it had been anyone else, he probably could have relied on the fact that they would be home in time for dinner, but seeing as Sherlock rarely ate, and could seemingly go for days without doing so, he couldn’t do so with him.  So he was alone, and when Sherlock didn’t return that evening it was hardly a surprise.  Instead, John took the time to draft a letter to Sarah and to read over some of the poems Sherlock had left behind on the desk.  It seemed impossible to him that Sherlock was so disgusted by emotion, as his work seemed rife with it.  His words spilled off the page and into John’s heart in such a way that he was nearly moved to tears.  He doubted anyone who met Sherlock would believe that he would be capable of writing anything so utterly beautiful.  Despite this, there was a distinctly cerebral quality to everything he wrote.  The emotions were intense, but tempered by what could only be Sherlock’s extreme intelligence.  His work was wholly captivating, but quick and sharp, so that it took John several reads before he felt he understood a piece fully.  And even then, he wasn’t sure he always got it all.

*

Though he had been unable to admit it, and even now, as he sat alone in the library under the dim light of a desk lamp, was unable to admit even to himself, was hurt by John’s mention of Sarah.  Never before had he been so…. attached to another person.  He had never wanted anyone the way he wanted John Watson, and it simultaneously infuriated and frightened him.  He had needed to get away for a while, so he stormed out, doing his best to injure John with words on his way out.  But now, he was having difficulty thinking at all, and the words weren’t coming, and thoughts of John were all consuming, so much so that he couldn’t help crying out in a mixture of frustration and anguish.  He was asked to leave the library after that.  He had already been pushing his luck by staying for as long as he had, three days by his count.  It made no sense to him that in being so far from John he should be consumed so fully by him, but that being near to him should allow his thoughts to flow more freely than they ever had.  He almost hated himself for the weakness in it.  Still, lacking a proper place to work, he found himself heading back to their room, back to John.  

John was out when he returned, and while part of him was very relieved, the other part was irritated.  He hated being made to wait, and just then he felt as though John was making him wait.  He bathed in the meantime, and dressed, slipping into his only other shirt, thrice patched and fraying at the sleeves.  He rolled them up for this reason, and sat on the edge of the bed as he contemplated what he might say when John returned, his fingers steepled under his chin, elbows on his knees.

He wasn’t sure how long he had been there like that when John finally did return, the click of the lock signaling his entrance into the room.

“Sherlock…” John sounded breathless and slightly startled, but Sherlock made no move to acknowledge him.  He cleared his throat, “Well, good to know you’re all right.”  When Sherlock finally turned enough to see him, he noted that John was holding a sack of food in one hand and letters in the other.

“There’s not much there in the way of food,” Sherlock noted, tilting his head in the direction of John’s sack.  He seemed to only just remember he was holding it and he moved to set it on the table, his fist clenching and unclenching at his side.  Clearly, he was deciding what should be said next.

“Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, and I don’t know how you could, seeing as you’ve been gone nearly a week and hardly pay me any mind when you are here, we’re getting rather short of money!”

Sherlock shot him a look of antipathy, his thoughts of apologies all but forgotten “And what are you suggesting, John? Be plain.”

John’s lips formed a thin line and he tilted his head at an angle that told Sherlock he was disappointed.  “You could help,” he began.  “Work. We’ve nearly burned through my savings gallivanting across half the bloody world! No plans to speak of and you… I went with you, abandoned my family for you, and what have I to show for it? You never even tell me that you,” he faltered and Sherlock took the opening, fueled by anger at being suddenly attacked when he meant to apologize.

“I won’t take a job, my work! Perish the thought!”

“Oh, your bloody work! Heaven forbid you do anything that might feed and shelter us. No, why would you, you’re Sherlock Holmes, aren’t you? Poet première! You don’t need food and shelter like the rest of us! Or why would you work when you’ve me to leech off of? I’m done, Sherlock.”  John grabbed the sack off of the table and headed for the door. 

Sherlock felt he was bluffing and stayed where he was, unwilling to entertain the thought that the conversation was really over.  John had yelled at him before, gotten frustrated before, but he rarely stormed out, and even when he did, he always came back.  He wouldn’t dare, not after he had warned him about leaving him before.  He began to feel silly after a few moments and moved to the window to watch John make his way up the street and across to the pub where he had taken to taking his time cooling off before returning for them to make up with one another, which usually involved a round of rough, passionate sex. 

Sherlock always liked it when John came back from being in a strop—he was the perfect mix of domineering and tender, something Sherlock was loathe to admit he actually enjoyed.  John would kiss him hard, bruisingly hard, and then he’d caress him, touch every inch of him like he was made of some precious metal, and then pound him into the mattress until he couldn’t think about anything other than how much he… Sherlock’s mind shied away from the word, away from the very prospect of the idea.  He would have put it from his mind completely if he wasn’t so completely alarmed by the fact that John wasn’t taking his usual path to the pub, and instead was headed toward the docks.  He couldn’t be, not really, he couldn’t have been serious about leaving.  No matter how much he didn’t want to believe it, John’s purposeful gait was headed in the direction of the docks. 

“John! Wait, John!”  He called out to him, a hint of panic rising in his voice.  When John didn’t stop, but instead ducked his head and pressed on, Sherlock made a mad scramble for the door, intent on running after him.

*

He’d had enough, more than enough really.  He didn’t know what it was that attracted him to Sherlock with such intensity, but being with him seemed to come at the price of his sanity.  Sherlock hadn’t even considered taking work, and not only that he hadn’t bothered to apologize for disappearing, not that he ever apologized.  He didn’t appreciate him, and he was terribly smug besides; John was simply fed up, and he left. 

Of course, he had felt it was a mistake right after he said it.  Despite that, his anger hadn’t waned, and he felt that when it came to Sherlock he often lacked conviction, and now, in this moment he had a chance to follow through, so he just kept walking.  When Sherlock cried out for him from the window, he had very nearly turned back, but he couldn’t stand the thought of how utterly smug Sherlock would be if he came right back, so he hunkered down and forced himself to keep walking.  He walked right out onto the dock and after a quick negotiation managed to procure a seat on the ferry, which would be off at any moment.  By the time he was on the little boat, Sherlock had reached the dock and was calling to him almost frantically.  John almost didn’t have the strength to stay seated.  He wanted to swim back to him, but instead he turned away and concentrated on making it to the next dock.  If Sherlock thought him weak, he would show him otherwise.  It was difficult to push the sounds of Sherlock’s voice from his ears—it was as near to anguish as he had ever heard him—but he did it all the same, steeled in his resolve to prove a point.  Though, at present, he wasn’t quite sure his point was worth it.

To distract himself from what he was sure was a terrible mistake, John forced himself to keep busy with writing.  If he had thought to bring his medical bag with him when he and Sherlock had first run off together, then perhaps he would have taken on patients, but that hadn’t been the case, and writing was really all he had.  He did manage a little dock work, but it was very temporary, infrequent, and paid little. 

He thought he was getting along well enough.  He hadn’t been so alone since before he married Sarah, and he considered the fact that maybe the time alone was good for him, except that he was mostly miserable whenever he thought of how far from Sherlock he was.  He was very near to breaking down and returning to the flat, and probably would have by the end of the week if he hadn’t received a letter from Sherlock first. 

_John,_

_It is clear to me that you wish to have nothing more to do with me.  You feel I have wronged you, and here, as I weep, I am inclined to agree. I have lost nights thinking of you, and I fear that I will only continue, as without your presence I am lost. You, dearest, conduct for me the most brilliant of lights on even my darkest of days, and though I have never begged before in my life, I beg of you now, if you care for me at all, return. You know how fond I am of you.  I am sincere in all that I say, and know I have never been more so when I say that I need you desperately._

_S. H._

Though the letter was short, John doubted he had ever been more moved by one.  He could see tearstains on the page, and he imagined Sherlock hurriedly wiping his eyes as he wrote.  If not for those stains, he might have been inclined to think Sherlock lying.  He was clever, cleverer than John, and John felt he might have been easily taken in by the words alone, as he had never met someone so adept at getting what they wanted through words alone when they chose.  It didn’t help that he missed him so terribly that he would be willing to believe almost anything if meant seeing him again.  John wrote back right away, asking that Sherlock meet him at his present location.  He sent along enough fare to get him to the port if he took the ferry across as John had done as a show of good faith.

*

Sherlock was on the ferry as soon as he received the letter from John.  He knew how terrible he probably looked—he had wept for days at being left and he had scarcely eaten anything as much from heartbreak as from lack of money and his usual disinclination to eat—but he couldn’t bring himself to care.  John’s letter had been scarcely three lines long, and had simply informed him to meet him at a given address as soon as he was able.  He hadn’t responded at all to what Sherlock had written, which was almost worse than if he had.  Sherlock had lost all sense of shame by the time he had written John, and had only desired having him returned to his side.  The ferry ride seemed to last an eternity, and he leapt from the little boat to the dock before it had been properly tied (to much protest from the boat’s captain) and stumbled as he hurried down cobbled streets to the address that John had given him.

Sherlock stood breathless outside of the door, behind which would be John Watson.  He wanted to see him, but standing just outside of the door, he felt fear rising within him once again.  The fear was similar to that which he felt when John had first left him.  Walking through that door would open him up to the possibility of that extreme feeling of aloneness again.  He had never known loneliness before John Watson, and now every moment without him felt like eternal isolation.  How had he let himself come to this?  He had hardly noticed it happening at all, and here he was now, standing outside of the door of a man who held his very heart (one he had been informed that he had lacked entirely) in his hands after having written a very undignified letter, which he would deny vehemently if ever questioned on its existence.  He was so terribly frightened, and yet he was compelled, and after a deep breath and a wipe of his still somewhat tearful eyes, he turned the knob.  

Sherlock sucked in a breath when he stepped through the door, afraid for the slightest instant that John wasn’t there.  He was though, sat in the wash basin in the corner, pouring water over his back.  The look on John’s face was an external representation of the way Sherlock felt his heart stutter in his chest.  He strode across the room, and John stumbled out of the basin to meet him.  He was dripping wet and stark naked, but Sherlock pulled him to his chest and hugged him fiercely before moving to kiss him with equal ferocity.  He only pulled away to allow John to breathe, as he was quite convinced that he could go on kissing John without need of air if he so chose.  He drank in his features, while John caught his breath, checking each of them against his memorized version of him.

“Christ, Sherlock… you feel like a bag of bones,” John had a look somewhere between doctor and concerned lover, but his voice was just as breathless as Sherlock felt.

“I’ve been on a steady diet of absinthe and tobacco,” Sherlock said finally, only just beginning to feel the chill from being pressed against a wet John.

“Christ,” John said again, and though Sherlock was reluctant to let him go, he pulled away and went to stoke the fire.

 

Sherlock’s head was rested on John’s chest, and he was half sprawled across him while John stroked his fingers through his hair.  John had attempted apologizing for his poor judgment in leaving him, but Sherlock had stopped him with his lips, having decided that apologies were inconsequential.  He had just needed to be to near him, and he insisted John take him to bed shortly after they had gotten the fire an acceptable height.  Listening to John’s heartbeat was relaxing and he let his eyes drift shut to the rhythm.

“Sherlock, love,” John’s voice was distant, uncertain after such a long silence, and Sherlock knew he was testing to see whether or not he was still awake.  He had half a mind to ignore him.  He wanted to keep John like this for as long as he could, and he didn’t want to muddle it with conversation.

“Mm,” was his response, and he shifted a little on John’s chest.  He wanted to melt into him.

“There’s something… I don’t want to spoil things, but I don’t think this can wait.”

“Be plain, John.”  Sherlock cracked open his eyes and looked up at him, still not moving from his chest.

“Right. Well…I heard back from Sarah,” John chewed his lip and Sherlock narrowed his eyes.

“And…?”

“She…she wants a divorce. I… I think it would be for the best. For everyone.”  His fingers stilled in Sherlock’s hair, and Sherlock sat up.

“You mean to say…” Sherlock tilted his head in question and spoke slowly, “You’re leaving her. For good this time?”

“I think it might be more accurate to say that she’s leaving me, but…yes,” John nodded and Sherlock leaned up to kiss his appreciation.  He probably would have kissed him right back into another round of sex if John hadn’t pulled back.

“Sherlock- Sherlock, wait. Divorcing Sarah means paperwork and court proceedings. And… I’ll have to be present for those. So, I’ll have to return home. I think it would be best if…”

“ ** _No!_** ”  Sherlock sat up more fully, his eyes fierce and full of determination.  He wasn’t about to let John leave him behind again.

“Sherlock, just listen-”

“John, there is absolutely nothing to listen to. I will not allow you to leave again.”

John sighed heavily but didn’t argue.  “You intend to come back with me, then?”

“Yes, of course.”

“She’s bringing me up on charges of abandonment and unnatural practices, Sherlock. Among other things. At very least, if they find me guilty of abandonment, which by all means, I am— I’m going to lose most of what I own. And if they find me guilty of the other, I could go to prison. Do you understand what that means? Sherlock, she won’t be afraid to implicate you as well. Or even if she wouldn’t, I’m sure her mother and father would urge her to do so. It would only solidify my guilt in the matter.”  He reached out to pull his fingers through Sherlock’s curls again, “I don’t want to see anything happen to you. I just think that it would be best if when we returned, you went back to your home, just until the proceedings are over. You can finish your manuscript and I can send it to my publisher. And at the end, I’ll rejoin you. I promise.”

Sherlock hated this plan.  He was thoroughly disturbed at the prospect of even a single day more passing without John by his side, and he had more than half the mind to argue John off of this ridiculous plan.  The truth, though grim, was that John was right.  He had, by legal standards, been very much in the wrong by leaving his wife to run around with him, and there was no real denying that they were physical with one another.  If things went that far, it would be easy for the both of them to be punished for sodomy and anything else that the courts found should go along with it.  Loathe as he was to admit it, John was right.  Sherlock took up residence on John’s chest again.

“If you intend on leaving me again so soon, then the least you can do is hold me through the night,” he sulked.  John’s fingers pulled their way through his curls, and he pulled the blanket over the both of them.

“We’ll be back together as soon as it’s all over,” John promised.  “This is for the best. A clean break.” 

Sherlock believed in promises about as much as he believed in love.  He didn’t make commitments or vows and he didn’t trust the man that did, but John Watson had begun pushing the bounds of all that he found tolerable from the moment they met, and he found himself wanting to believe very much that what he promised him now was true.


	7. Parted

The train ride back was a mostly silent affair, in which John sat next to Sherlock and Sherlock sulked silently while refusing to let go of his hand.  It might have been endearing if Sherlock didn’t always seem to look positively murderous when he sulked.  He had tried to explain again before they left that all of this was a means to a greater end, something he thought Sherlock might be more willing to accept, but to no avail.  He had stayed silent while John gathered the few items they had to pack, and except for when he had taken his hand upon sitting on the train, still had nothing to say.

Ordinarily, John might have pulled his hand from Sherlock’s for the sake of decency, as they hadn’t been able to afford a compartment for the long trip back, (though John felt Sherlock would have found a way to get them in one if he had been in a better mood) and were easily looked upon by anyone who cared to glance.  Sherlock’s mood, however, prevented him doing any such thing, and he sat quietly next to him with interlaced fingers in hopes that his mood would pass before they reached the station where they would have to part ways.  Sherlock would continue on home and John would begin the undoubtedly long and trying affair that was his divorce.

They were less than twenty minutes from John’s stop, and Sherlock still hadn’t spoken a word to him.  He had tried to hold out, but they were close now and the train had more or less emptied of people.  John simply didn’t think his resolve as strong as Sherlock’s in these matters.  Perhaps Sherlock had been right to think him weak.    

“Sherlock, I… I want to say that right now, what I’m going to do… this is going to be a new start for me, for the pair of us.”  John had never considered himself a particularly outstanding person—he lived life like everyone else, day to day.  He was a physician, but a writer too, he expressed himself on paper the way he never could verbally, and it so happened that he had been able to make somewhat of a career of it.  He had married the first woman who had seemed really fond of him after he had begun his practice, had started a family with her, and completely arsed it up in the process, but he had met Sherlock Holmes.  Sherlock had swept in with his coat, and his ridiculous ideals about how the world worked, and his brilliance, and John had fallen for him harder and faster than he had ever known was possible.  He was uncooperative and temperamental, but he could be strangely charming, and when he spoke it was like he had thought through absolutely every possibility for any given situation in a matter of seconds.  Sometimes, it was like he was putting on a show that John alone had the privilege of enjoying.  John couldn’t imagine a life without him.  He was clueless as to how he had managed prior to now.  So when he said he was going through with this divorce so they could start a new life together, he meant it completely. 

He couldn’t have gone back to Sarah even if he wanted to.  Sometimes he thought he did.  It would have been most proper, and if he could have promised with absolute certainty that he would leave Sherlock Holmes behind forever, he might have gone to Sarah and pleaded for her mercy.  She would be angry and uncertain, and more than likely she would take a long time to forgive him, but eventually would, and they would write this time off as John having needed time to sow wild oats that he had failed to while he had been in medical school.  They would never speak of it, and Sherlock would be all but forgotten.  But the only thing he knew he could promise Sarah was that without a doubt, any time Sherlock showed up, she would be moved to second place.  Through no real fault of her own, she would never be able to hold a candle to Sherlock.  No matter how devoted John had proved to be prior to his arrival, Sherlock had a special brand of magnetism meant for John in particular.

“I promise, when this is all over…”

Sherlock had turned piercing eyes on him and the suddenness of being looked at after being ignored for the last three hours had John swallowing his words.

“Stop making promises, John,” Sherlock’s voice was low, almost pained.  He leaned in and pressed his lips against John’s, squeezing his hand more tightly than he had the entire trip.  John could feel the train beginning to slow, and he felt panic, both at being kissed in public and the fact that he was about to be parted from Sherlock for an indeterminate amount of time in.  Sherlock pulled away and released his hand, resuming his previous station of staring out the window.  The platform was in view, and the whole situation was moving much more quickly than John would have liked.  The steward was passing through now, checking tickets, and before John had time to say more he was handing his own ticket over and standing to get off the train. 

Sherlock still hadn’t looked back at him, and John found himself hurrying around to view him through the window outside of the train.  He stood on the platform and stared up at Sherlock, who was completely unmoving, but gazed back at him, hand covering what John felt had to be downturned lips.  John raised his hand to wave at him, feeling helpless to do much else as the train lurched back into motion.

 

 

“Sarah, what do you expect me to do? I’m here. I came to do this properly. You’re the one who served me the papers, aren’t you?”  John was exasperated and Sarah was huffily whirling about the house, tidying things up with one hand while she bounced Marie on her hip with the other.  Marie was nearly two now, and resembled Sarah most closely except for her wispy blonde hair and button nose.  He was surprised at how big she had gotten. 

John really hadn’t been in the mood to come back to the house when he left the station, but he forced himself to it.  He didn’t expect that he would be able to stay there, but he thought he should at least let it be known that he had returned and was ready to carry on with things regarding the divorce.  Sarah hadn’t been pleased, to say the least, when he had arrived on the doorstep, but she had stepped aside to let him in.  He had started with an apology, to which she had turned away, and then he had moved into trying to discuss his plans for the coming months and the charges she had brought against him, which is what had her storming about the place and him following after her.

She had always played wife very well, mostly holding her tongue until she felt strongly on a matter, and she was putting on a marvelous show of it now, but John wished she would speak to him.

“Sarah,” he pleaded again, and she turned on him, still bouncing the baby, but looking as close to furious as he had ever seen her.  Her face was flushed and her mouth was set in a thin line, her hair wisping about her face and neck in a way that made her look ten years older than she really was.  It occurred to John that he had done that to her with his stepping out.  Guilt tightened in his stomach.

“What do I expect you to do,” her voice was hushed, but sharp.  “I expect you to be a bloody husband and father, John Watson. I expect you to stop buggering that-that-that catamite! That harlot!”

“Oi!” John’s reaction had been automatic, and while Sarah hadn’t been far from the truth, he didn’t think pointing out the fact that he and Sherlock had taken turns, like he was tempted to do, was the best choice at the moment.  He took a deep breath and collected himself again.  It wasn’t fair to be short with her.  She had been through a lot.  “Sarah, I have apologized to you. I don’t expect that to be enough. I don’t expect you ever to forgive me, but I’m here now, and I want to put things right.”

“John Watson wants to put things right!”                                                                                         

“Sarah, the baby…” John changed his approach in trying to calm her.

“No! No. You _do not_ get to do that! You don’t get to bring her into this. You’ve barely seen her since she’s been born. I don’t want you to speak a word about her. You get your things, John, and you leave my parents’ house.”  She was near tears, but still bouncing Marie steadily.  The baby was a little fussy, but seemed mostly unaffected by Sarah’s frustration.  When John didn’t move, she let out a sob and wiped away the few tears she had been unable to keep at bay.  “Did you ever love me at all? Did she mean nothing,” she indicated Marie.  “I was a _good_ wife, John. I am a good wife. But this is too much. I can’t… I can’t do this. I can’t compete with him for your attentions.”

John didn’t know what to say to her, and he stared at the floor as he considered her words.  “I didn’t mean for this to happen. I didn’t mean for any of it to…get this out of hand.”  He couldn’t look at her, such was his guilt.

“Then just come home. Can you promise me…just don’t see him anymore. That’s all I ask. I’ll call off the lawyers, everything, just come home and forget about him. We can, if it’ll help, we can look to purchase our own property again, move away from here.”  Her voice was desperate.  This was all she had left.  Sarah wiped her eyes again and John couldn’t help the pained expression that he felt overcome his face.

He shook his head, finding it difficult to make the words he needed to say to her come.  “No,” his words were clipped with guilt.  “Sarah, I can’t. I can’t, I… I- he’s…. Really, I’ve…” he stopped himself, “I don’t expect you to understand it because I don’t even understand it, but-”

“Get out,” Sarah had pulled Marie closer to her and kissed her forehead.  “Just get out. I don’t want to see you back here. You can collect your things once the court has had their say.”  She turned from him, and he knew it really was hopeless.  He couldn’t persuade her.  He had said all the wrong things, and he felt exhausted from the weight of everything that was going on around him.  He straightened, grabbed his medical bag from where he had always kept it on the end table, and started for the door.  He paused with his hand on the knob, “I truly am sorry, Sarah. I never meant to hurt you like this.”

 

 

The following months were agonizing.  There was paperwork, more of it than John would have ever cared to see in his entire life.  Documents had to be obtained, signed, processed, and signed again.  Then came the hearing.  John would have hired himself a lawyer, but he had little means these days, and most of what he did earn by way of seeing patients when he had the time and the royalties on his published works went to Sarah and Marie.  He had hoped to compensate at least a little for his irresponsibility by doing his best to keep them up.  Sarah had forbidden him to see Marie, and if he was honest, he thought it was probably for the best.  He had spent precious little time with her after her birth, and he had hardly formed any real attachment to her.  At the rate things were going for him, it was probably for the best if she didn’t know him at all.  If Sarah was granted the divorce, she would be free to re-marry, and certainly she would find a suitable husband after that.

John wrote to Sherlock when he could he manage.  He wanted to write to him every day- he thought of him as much- but a combination of prudence and a lack of time prevented him.  Sarah had not dropped the ‘unnatural practices’ part of her suit, and it would have been easy enough for someone to get a hold of his letters to Sherlock to use as evidence against him.  Sherlock, when he could be bothered to return a letter to him, would sometimes include rather obscene passages, which John imagined he wrote while inebriated or desperate, two states that John had found himself in often enough since they had parted.  He very pointedly avoided writing while intoxicated these days.  Instead, those were the nights he generally laid in bed alone and rutted shamelessly, desperately, pathetically into his mattress with Sherlock’s name on his lips.

John’s hearing was unexpectedly short, and ended in disaster.  He was brought before the court, and after they had established the charges against him and he was given a chance to defend himself (what could he say in his defense? That his constant disappearance was a means to improve his work and thus improve the life of his family? Even he could hardly believe such a tale), he was submitted to a medical examination.  After being forcibly spread and prodded in all manner of ways, he was returned to the court, where his examiner determined that he had been both an active and passive party to sodomy.  Even without the other charges leveled against him, Sarah could have been granted the divorce on that charge alone.  He had never expected that he would be examined in such a way, and while he had tried to refuse, the court had insisted that such serious charges be rectified by way of science.  He was sentenced to two years in prison and Sarah was granted the divorce. 

*

Sherlock worked tirelessly on his manuscript when he returned home.  Mycroft was still there, of course, but he seemed to know better than to pry when Sherlock came in and locked himself away for almost a week.  He did try to keep him fed, and even on occasion tried for what amounted to small talk, which they both had always detested, but Sherlock spent his first week home pining.  Leaving John had been more difficult than even he had expected, and it left him feeling listless, at least until the boredom of thinking of nothing at all overcame him.  Well, that, and Mycroft’s attempts at chatting with him were almost more than he could bear, so after a week, he forced himself out of bed and set up shop in front of his window again.

By the end of his third month away from John his manuscript had been finished.  He had cried bitterly some nights, drank himself into a coma on others, and burned or slashed anything that he wrote that seemed inadequate, and in the end he had come out with something acceptable and that was it.  He felt he had said everything in that tiny book of poems that could possibly be said.  Oh, he had hundreds upon hundreds of poems that he could have been just as easily included in the publication of this book—he hadn’t gone a single day without writing any less than three poems since he had started writing seriously—but the ones in this manuscript were it for him.  No others needed to be seen by public eyes.  His work was complete.

However, shortly after he sent the finished manuscript to John, he received a letter informing him that John had been arrested.  Mycroft had handed it to him at the breakfast table, as it had apparently come the day before while Sherlock had been out avoiding the need to do housework.  He hadn’t returned until late that evening when he knew that Mycroft would be asleep, or at very least in his room for the night. 

Sherlock was rocked by the news.  In fact, he was completely beside himself, and his eyes searched the paper frantically for some indication that this was a cruel joke.  His mind was quickly running through and discarding every possibility that could have possibly replaced the truth between his fingers.

Mycroft had apparently taken notice of the way the blood had completely drained from his face, because he said, “Sherlock, what’s come over you?”

And when Sherlock didn’t answer, but instead handed over the letter, shock keeping him from good judgment where he would have ordinarily shut Mycroft out, his brother said, “Well. I… I’m very sorry for you,” with what could only be recognized as sympathy, which was really too much for Sherlock. 

He bolted, tore out of the house and through the fields where he eventually collapsed into a fit of violent sobs and pained cries of “John!”  When his eyes refused to cry another tear and were so swollen that he felt as though he had been beaten, he began to curse himself for ever believing that John could keep his promise to him, for wishing that he would.  When his throat was raw from screaming his anguish and the cold finally began to bite through the numbness that had come with finding that John wouldn’t be returning to him, Mycroft found him.

He didn’t offer any more words of sympathy, but instead forced him to his feet and back to the house.  Sherlock felt as though he was moving through water, and it took every ounce of his energy not to drown.  Mycroft forced him to eat, and at length said, “What are you going to do now?”  His tone was even, and though Sherlock knew that Mycroft was very aware of his relationship with John, he hated him for asking.  “You’ve given up writing now, haven’t you? You can’t spend the rest of your life waiting for him. What will you do now, Sherlock Holmes?”  There was challenge in his words and Sherlock hated him all the more.

Sherlock glared at him through puffy, red-rimmed eyes, “I’m going to leave the country.”

And he did precisely that.  There was nothing left for him there any longer.  He had never had any particular attachment to the house, and he could hardly stand Mycroft besides.  He was finished writing and he thought to take himself to India.  The culture was vast and he felt he could reinvent himself there. 

He jumped the first ship to India he could manage and put his talents to use upon arrival.  He first encountered a ship’s captain who was having trouble with disappearing goods.  He offered to find the culprit for a nominal fee, and before long he had made a name for himself.  It had been easy enough to deduce which of his crewmen was skiving goods and turning an extra profit.  He spent most of his time solving petty crimes and mysteries, but people paid exorbitant amounts of money for information they thought they wanted, and he was able to live comfortably there for a long time. 

The first year was the hardest for him.  Even living comfortably as he was in a small bungalow, he would spend nights yearning for John, and as a result he took many lovers in an attempt to put an end to such unpleasantness.  This really never offered more than a temporary fix, but he took a liking to one boy in particular and kept him.  He was nothing like John, really, but something about him reminded Sherlock of him, probably it was his laugh.  He threw his head back in a similar way, and by the end of the second year things were easier for him.  He hardly thought of home at all in the three years that followed that.

*

John was released from prison and was at odds with what to do with himself.  His first thought was Sherlock, and he wrote to him as soon as he was able.  An old friend helped him get set up with a flat and a job taking patients at a small surgery owned by a friend of an uncle.  Initially, he worked on regaining his strength, prison had not been a kind place and he had lost a considerable amount of body mass while he had been there.  He had lost the heart for writing while he had been there as well, and he felt disinclined to write anything even remotely poetic, and instead focused on the patients he had from day to day.  The letter he received on Sherlock’s behalf was more prompt than anything John had ever received from him before.  Quite possibly because it wasn’t from him at all.  Printed, in fine, curly script was a single sentence:

            _Sherlock Holmes has left the country and has shown no indication of ever returning._

And was signed by a ‘Mycroft Holmes’.

John wasn’t sure what he had expected.  Sherlock had never been patient and he had been doubtful about John’s promises to reunite.  He hadn’t been able to write to him while he had been in prison, so there had been no way to keep him assured of a reunion.  John supposed he had no one to blame but himself, but still… he crumpled the letter in his hands and fought back the tears that threatened by taking long deep breaths.  He would have to move on.

Moving on, it seemed, was not as easy as deciding it made it out to be.  Because moving on implied that you could still move, and really, it was the last thing that John wanted to do.  He had nothing left, hardly any money, no wife, no family, not even Sherlock who he had fallen this far for to begin with.  He didn’t want to move, but he had to.  He had been helped to start over, and the least he could do was pretend to be gracious.  He saw patients at the surgery and paid his rent and ate alone in his flat, because after all that he had been through and all he had put other people through, he owed it to anyone who cared even the slightest bit about him to not let it all fall apart. 

He went on like this for the next few years, and eventually, he grew accustomed to it, and pretending didn’t feel so much like pretending any more.  There was still a hollow place in him, one he didn’t think he would ever be able to fill again, but he was getting along in life.  He had some semblance of a life.  He even got back to writing, though only very casually, after a while.  Writing had always brought him a certain amount of solace, so mostly he kept a journal where he would dump any unpleasant or even especially pleasant feelings, and on days where he couldn’t help but think of Sherlock, he dumped him there too.  But mostly, he got along not thinking about him, because thinking about him was almost always painful, even when the memories were good ones, especially when the memories were good ones.  Life went on and he was able to reestablish himself as an upstanding gentleman, if only slightly less distinguished than he had been prior to Sherlock.  Being a doctor made it easy enough for him to reassert himself to society.

He was taking lunch at his usual café when he was delivered a letter from one of the young men that assisted at the surgery.  He assured him that it was urgent, as John had always been rather insistent upon the fact that he take lunch undisturbed.  He dismissed the boy so that he could open the letter in private, which he was later glad that he did, because his heart nearly stopped upon reading it.

The letter was once again signed ‘Mycroft Holmes’ but it bore news no better than that he had received upon his first letter from the man.  It seemed, that Sherlock had returned, that he was living alone in that dusty old flat John had rented for him all those years ago, and that he was dying.  The words in the letter were as succinct as they had been in the one that had come to him in reply some years ago, and now, like then, he wished it hadn’t come at all.  There was no stopping the tears that came this time.  No amount of deep breaths would calm him.  Nothing could have possibly prepared him for such devastating news. 

This was not how things were supposed to go.  Sherlock was not supposed to come back, and if he did, John was never meant to know about it.  He had moved on.  He had a new life, a quiet life.  No one as passionate and mad as Sherlock was ever supposed to interrupt it again.  His chest felt tight, and he realized that he was now attracting the attention of several patrons, which only served to increase his anxiety.  He hurried out of the café and by the grace of God made it back to the surgery, where he expressed that he needed to take some time off, that he was suffering fatigue and wasn’t well enough to take on patients at the moment.  And then he was at his flat and he was packing, though he scarcely knew what.  Sherlock wasn’t supposed to come back.  How dare he come back?  The familiar process of throwing things into a carpet bag allowed the anxiety he felt to melt into something more like anger, and he became irrationally furious.

How dare he!  If he died, what concern was it of John’s?  They hadn’t seen one another in more than eight years, they hadn’t written or spoken and John tried his best not to think of him.  What right did he have?  Why did he get to go back there, that terrible place made beautiful by countless nights of shared passion and ideals?  It wasn’t fair!  John slammed things, drawers, doors, anything he could for as long as he could until he felt the steam run out of him.  And then he was crying again, his carpet bag still open next to him on the bed.  He could feel every piece of his heart laying shattered in his chest.  He pressed his hands hard against his eyes, so hard he felt he might go blind.  He had fought so hard for so long to shut out Sherlock. 

He had spent two years in prison, thinking every day that it would be worth it because in the end, he had done it all so they could start over together.  And when he had been released, when the only person on his heart and mind had been Sherlock Holmes, there was nothing there for him.  Sherlock hadn’t waited for him, and he had been left alone, had felt more broken and torn than he ever had.  It had taken him a long time to climb out of that place, to make Sherlock’s face be something that haunted him only now and again rather than nightly.  He had put every distraction he could manage in place, and now…  He let out a great sob, a cry of, “Oh, God,” mingled with his breaths.  As much as he wanted to forget, he never could.  As much as he wanted to stay away, he never would.  He had ruined his marriage, lost his entire family for this one man, this one magnificent, dying man, and there was nothing on earth that could prevent him from flying to him now.

John got the next train that he could, and tried to block out all the memories that now seemed to flood his person with visions of Sherlock.  He was imprinted everywhere in the city, the station, the promenade, the pubs he passed on the way, all of them held Sherlock.  When he reached the flat, now the most dilapidated part of an area that had been much improved since his stay there, he couldn’t bring himself to knock on the door.  He didn’t know what to expect on the other side.  He had seen a great many patients, and he had watched some of them die.  He wasn’t sure he was prepared to see that on Sherlock.

As it happened, he didn’t have to knock.  A pretty young girl in a nurse’s smock opened the door, and gave him a look that he was quite certain was similar to his own shocked expression.

“Oh. Uhm, excuse me. Can I help you?” She spoke and that was enough to jerk John into speech as well.     

“Right. I didn’t mean to startle you. Sherlock Holmes? I’m meant to see him.”

A look of dawning crossed her features, “Doctor Watson? Mister Holmes told me to expect you. He said you were to be his personal physician from now until…well.”

“Yes. Did he?”  John’s brows drew down in confusion.  He hadn’t written ahead to inform anyone of his decision to come.  Though he wouldn’t have put it past even a dying Sherlock to reason out that he was coming by some odd angle that sun poured through the window.

“The other Mister Holmes,” she clarified.  “He hired me to look after Sherlock on account of the fact that Sherlock refuses to see him. I was just on my way to have lunch made for him. I’m Molly,” she explained.

“Pleasure. Sorry, other Mister Holmes? Mycroft,” John recalled the letters and the bitterness the name left on his tongue.

Molly nodded, “Sherlock’s brother. Mister Holmes, the elder.”

“Ah.”  John didn’t want a conversation about Mycroft.  As far as John was concerned, he was a harbinger of ill news, and it was just as well that Sherlock didn’t want to see him.  “Is Sherlock…”John wanted to ask about how Sherlock was doing, but even now, he wasn’t sure he could take the answer.  “I mean… is he…” John blinked away a few tears, and he could see the look of concern on Molly’s face.

“You can go in and see him, if you like, Doctor Watson. He’s feeling a bit more energetic today, I think.”

John nodded, “John. Please. And, thank you, I will.” 

Molly stepped aside, “John, then. I’ll be back in a bit with lunch. Is there anything I can get you?”

“No, I’m fine, thanks again.”  John took a deep breath and walked through the door, which Molly closed behind her.  Sherlock was laid in the bed, his face almost as white as the linens, his eyes closed.  His curls were just as angelic as ever though, and John was almost frightened to say anything.  Sherlock looked nearly dead already, only the shallow movement of his chest giving indication that he hadn’t already left the world.  John sat his bag down and removed his coat, folding it over his arm as he stepped closer to the bed.

“Get on with it, John. I’m dying, not deaf.”  Sherlock’s eyes opened and John felt his heart drop out of his chest in near fright.  He hadn’t expected him to speak and he certainly hadn’t expected him to turn those startling eyes on him.  In two long strides he was as Sherlock’s side, though he made no move to touch him.

“How are you then,” he managed, his throat tight.

“As I stated, dying. I have a tumor. I refused to let them cut into me. I stayed in India for too long without treatment.”  Sherlock’s voice was still deep and lovely, but much softer than it had once been.  “I’m mostly invalided. They’ve given me a month. And my nurse has taken a fancy to me. How ridiculous. It makes no sense to fall for someone on the brink of death.”

The air left John’s lungs in a rush, and he had to sit on the edge of the bed to keep his knees from buckling out from under him.  He was silent for a time.  Sherlock seemed to be taking this all in stride, but wasn’t that so like him?  John had no idea what to say.

“You’re easy to fall in love with,” he said finally, his voice quiet with the truth of it.  Sherlock searched his face for a moment before turning away from him.

“Don’t say such ridiculous things, John.”

John sighed.  He reached out to touch Sherlock’s face, but stopped himself half way there.  He didn’t even know if Sherlock wanted anything to do with him after all this time.  “Why didn’t you wait,” he asked eventually.  It was the only real question worth voicing.  The room was silent except for the crackling of the fire and sounds from the street below. 

John felt as though he wasn’t going to answer at all, and he opened his mouth to speak again, to rail on him about how much he had given up only to return to nothing, but Sherlock managed to take his hand, and he was left breathless again.

“You left me,” he said gravely.  “You left me, and I wanted to be the one to leave you for once.”  His thumb smoothed over the back of John’s hand, and when he looked up again, there were tears in shining in Sherlock’s eyes.  “Don’t leave me again, John Watson. I won’t take you back.” 

John couldn’t keep his own tears at bay any longer and he moved to press his face into Sherlock’s shoulder, climbing into bed next to him.  He clung to Sherlock and murmured apologies against his neck.  He felt selfish, unbelievably selfish.  It had never occurred to him that Sherlock would be hurt so deeply by his inability to be decisive about who he had wanted to be with.  Of course, they had argued back then, but John had always amounted it to the strain of the situation and Sherlock’s general irritability.  He had always been ill-tempered about anything regarding Sarah, and things had been even more heated there near the end.  He hadn’t quite taken it to heart when Sherlock had told him he wouldn’t take him back the first time.

“I’m not going anywhere this time, Sherlock. Not ever again,” he told him and pressed a kiss to his neck.  He couldn’t believe he was touching him, that he was there and real and beside him.  He had spent so many nights imagining what it would be like to see Sherlock again, to finally be with him as fully as he wanted, but it had never come with the stipulation that Sherlock had to be dying first.

 

In the following weeks, John cared for Sherlock as though they had never been parted.  He didn’t seem much different except for how pale he was and his general weakness.  If Sherlock was feeling up to it, then John took him for a turn around the room, after which they would sit near the window so that Sherlock could tell him about the people that passed on the street below the way he used to do to impress him when they went out together.  John liked to remind him that he had stood naked at that window back then, and that he reckoned it was then that he had lost himself to him.  Sherlock always just scoffed.  If he wasn’t feeling well enough, then John read to him or they sat and talked.  Sometimes he just climbed into bed and slept next to him.  Molly still came, though her visits had been reduced to three times a week by Sherlock’s mandate, as it seemed Mycroft would not allow him to relieve her entirely.  He complained as loudly as he could manage on the days that she came, insisting that John did a well enough job of caring for him without her help.  Mostly John just laughed at him and usually invited Molly to have lunch with them.  It was quite clear to him that she had taken a fancy to Sherlock, but he appreciated how tender she was when dealing with him, and she had a generally sweet manner.  He liked her, and he couldn’t quite blame her for falling for Sherlock.  Even in his most irritable of moods there was something undeniable about him.  John supposed not just anyone could see it—it took a certain type of person, maybe—but those people were probably doomed to be caught in his orbit no matter what they did.       

What John wasn’t prepared for was Sherlock’s sudden decline in health.  Of course, he had known from the beginning that Sherlock was dying, but until that point, he had seemed more like himself than not.  At first, he seemed just to sleep more.  Sometimes he wouldn’t wake even when John shook him.  This always frightened him terribly.  Since returning to Sherlock’s side, his biggest fear had become losing him without getting the chance to tell him goodbye.  He would slip in and out of consciousness, and would fall asleep in the middle of their conversations.  It wasn’t uncommon for Sherlock to call out in his sleep.  Usually, this was harmless, but there were times where his crying became frantic, and if John couldn’t wake him right away then he would climb into bed and hold him until he settled again.  Frequently, John’s name was on his lips when this happened, and John couldn’t help feeling that Sherlock’s fear of him leaving had never really subsided.

“Here, I’m right here, love, shhh,” John stroked his fingers through Sherlock’s hair, which had become thinner and duller than it used to be.  Sherlock had come out of a particularly vocal fit just before lunch, but had thankfully woken up.  He was shaking, and John pulled the blanket up around him more tightly to fend off both the cold he felt in Sherlock’s hands and the tremors that had come from his terror.  Sherlock seemed to struggle for air, and John had to make sure he didn’t hold him too tight.  Sherlock seemed so frail in his arms.  He thought he might crush him if he wasn’t careful.  He was frightened for them both, and while he knew as a doctor that all he could really do was make Sherlock comfortable until the end, as a lover he wanted there to be more.  He began to talk to distract himself from all of it.  Sherlock had grown terribly thin, as he had been neglecting to eat even more than usual, even when John urged him.  He hardly seemed himself anymore, the wild light had nearly gone out of his eyes, and John found it all too devastating to bear.

“Tell me, Sherlock, tell me why you never write anymore,” he questioned, his cheek pressed against the top of Sherlock’s head as he sat behind him.

“I stopped,” Sherlock said after an unnaturally long pause.

John gave a dry chuckle, “Obviously. But you were so brilliant. Why did you stop, hm?”

Sherlock actually managed a smirk, “I’m still brilliant, John. I…” he took a shallow breath, “…said it all, John. There was…nothing more.”  Sherlock’s breathing hadn’t quite evened out like it normally did, and John tried not to focus on that.

“In…the…in the desk…” Sherlock motioned weakly to the little desk he had always used when he had first come to stay in the flat.  “For you,” he managed.

“No…” John shook his head furiously, “No… Sherlock, no, don’t do this,” John didn’t even try to fight off his tears.  He shifted so he could see Sherlock’s face, which was ashen, and didn’t help at all to put the inevitable from John’s mind.  “Sherlock, I love you. More than I’ve ever loved anyone, you know. Do you… do you love me,” he asked, his voice breaking.  He was grasping at anything to keep Sherlock’s attention.  If it meant having him berate him or call him an idiot, he didn’t care.

Sherlock managed to actually laugh, and John threaded their fingers together.

“John… you know… I’ve always been very… fond of you.”

John was weeping openly now, and he pressed a kiss to Sherlock’s lips.  Sherlock had gone still before he ever pulled away, and John cried out with everything he had in him, against whatever force in the world had led him to such a cruel fate.  He kept Sherlock close and wept into his hair, his body so wracked with pain that he didn’t think he would be able to feel anything else ever again.

He hardly noticed when Molly came in, nor did he care that she had found him weeping so bitterly over a man she only knew to have once been his traveling companion.  He had never felt the need to disclose the true nature of his relationship with Sherlock to her, but perhaps that had been because he felt she already knew.  When he finally did manage to look over at her, he could see the tears in her eyes, which she had clearly tried to wipe away before he took notice. 

“John, I’m so so sorry,” she breathed and she put her arms around him though he still hadn’t let go of Sherlock’s body.  Eventually, he let her help him out of bed, and once he had assured her that he would be all right on his own, she went to fetch the undertaker. 

He sat in his chair for a long while, grief weighing on him like nothing else.  Everything around him was Sherlock and nothing around him was Sherlock and all of it was complete agony.  The entire room was one big memory of Sherlock and it took everything in him not to tear out of there and never look back.  His eyes fell onto the writing desk, and he got up to open the single drawer in it as he remembered Sherlock’s words.  Inside was a thick notebook, bound in brown leather and tied shut with a piece of twine.  John set the notebook on the desk and sat down to open it.  On the first page was a line of text in Sherlock’s cramped handwriting that, if he hadn’t been so shaken with grief, might have made him laugh.

            _If you are anyone other than the acclaimed poet Doctor John H. Watson, then kindly place this back in the writing drawer and take care to forget you ever laid eyes on it._

John moved the page and at first didn’t really comprehend what was in front of him.  The title at the top of the second page was “Words I Could Not Say” and a poem at a length of nearly two pages followed.  The next title was “Words I Meant to Say” and another poem followed.  Both pieces were written with heart-breaking clarity, and John felt that though this was the case, they deviated very much from Sherlock’s usual style.  In fact, they were nothing like the poems in the first manuscript Sherlock had sent him, which he had initially been unable to have published due to his imprisonment, and had never felt right about doing so without Sherlock being there after the fact.  Then “Words I Want to Say” the shortest of the three poems seemed to wrap up the set, or at least, it would have been a logical ending for John.  However, the next poem was titled “For John” which was a compilation of all the best bits of the previous three poems and ended with

            _But you know that I’ve always been very fond of you._

John was reduced to tears again, completely undone by all that he had just read.  Sherlock had never once told him that he loved him outright, not one time in all the time they had spent together had he ever given up renouncing love or sentiment, but right there in front of him was the proof to how deeply Sherlock had really felt.  “Love” wasn’t printed in any of the poems in front of him, but their existence alone was proof enough to him.  Love, Sherlock had once said, had to be reinvented, and for John, he had done just that.  He shuffled some of the other papers in the notebook around once he had collected himself a little, and found that the rest was a collection of Sherlock’s poems in his usual style.  There were probably a hundred or more just there, and he had no idea if there were others that Sherlock had kept somewhere else.  He didn’t have time to consider it for long though, because Molly knocked and let herself back in, and John did his best to wipe his face and collect Sherlock’s poems back up again.

 

In the end, John couldn’t bring himself to stay for Sherlock’s funeral.  Watching them put him in the ground seemed so wrong to him, that he left as soon as he was able, taking with him Sherlock’s poems and a lock of hair that John had always so loved running his fingers through.  Molly promised she would convey his sympathies to Mycroft and hoped that he would keep in touch with her. 

He returned to the small town clinic he had been at before he had gone to care for Sherlock, but picking up and carrying on like nothing had happened was almost too much for him.  War broke out not long after, and John threw himself headlong into the fray.  The constant action was a much better distraction than he could have ever hoped for, and if he took too many unnecessary risks, well, it just made him look like a hero as opposed to the mess that he actually was. 

A bullet to the knee put him out of action, and really, when he wept as the surgeon dug the lead out of his flesh; it wasn’t from any physical pain, but the bitter longing that came with wishing for death.  After a while, he even laughed about it, because wasn’t it just like Sherlock to be right about him even after death?  He didn’t even have the conviction of spirit to die when shot.  He had to go and get himself shot in the knee.  It was probably that thought, the thought of Sherlock standing over him and berating him for that particular character flaw that saved his life.  If he couldn’t die properly, then he would live, and he would do as much with living as he possibly could.  Anyway, it seemed a shame to allow Sherlock’s work to go unpublished.  It seemed a shame to allow even those poems Sherlock had written for him, just for him, to be forgotten to time. 


	8. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one picks up where the prologue left off.

“Doctor Watson, were you aware that when my brother returned from India, he came first to our home? I wanted to care for him there, but he insisted on being moved to the city. The country air would have been better for him, but he was very adamant that he be housed in that flat until he breathed his last breath.”  Mycroft’s expression was one that John felt he probably used whenever he had information that others didn’t know.

“No, I didn’t know that,” John’s face was set, completely unintimidated, as he had fought in a war, and had seen almost nothing worse than the horrors he had seen there.

“You see, I know that you meant a great deal to him, and that perhaps he meant a great deal to you. So, I’m certain that we have common interests in wanting him remembered in the best possible light.”

“Yes, Mister Holmes, I would say so.”

“He wrote many of those poems when he was very young, Doctor Watson. So you’ll understand why I want to collect any remaining works of his that you may have and destroy them.”  Mycroft slid out from behind the table and buttoned his jacket, indicating that he felt the matter was closed for discussion.  John stood to receive him.  “Please, don’t stand, Doctor Watson, your knee.”

John ignored the request and stood anyway.  Being shot didn’t mean he was a cripple, and he didn’t fancy having this man attempt to use his height as an advantage over him. 

“Is there anything else I can do for you, Mister Holmes?”

Mycroft hooked his umbrella over his arm, “You have my card, don’t you?”

John searched the table a moment, having forgotten the card entirely, “Yes, of course,” he held it up as proof.

“Good. It was a pleasure to finally meet such a distinguished poet, Doctor Watson.”

“Pleasure.”

Mycroft took his leave.  John watched after him and tore the card in two once he was out the door.  He took his seat again and ordered a drink before pulling out the locket he always carried on his person—even through the war—the contents of which was a single sable colored curl, slightly faded with time.  He ran his thumb along the outside of it, lost in memory.  Not a night went by that he didn’t close his eyes and find Sherlock Holmes waiting there for him, as devastatingly beautiful and wild as the day they met.  There never was and had never been anyone since quite like him, and John reveled in the knowledge that he had once loved and been loved by such an indomitable force. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had so much fun writing this fic! I never would have thought I could manage it, but I'm really sort of proud of how it turned out, especially given the time restraints (I'm a notorious procrastinator)! I'm pretty new to fic writing, but I hope I did the characters at least a little justice! I used Sarah as John's wife instead of Mary for several reason's, in case you were confused: I was wary of writing Mary in the role of "Mathilde" because in the movie Mathilde is a bit flat as a character, and I find Mary so complex that I couldn't imagine paring her down for the purposes of this fic. I really do like Sarah Sawyer as a canonical BBC Sherlock character, but she's a little less complex. I felt that the fact that after being kidnapped and nearly killed, that she stays in a relationship with John is something I felt fit really well with her character in regards to this fic. I hope you were able to enjoy reading this if only a little bit, as it was definitely a labor of love! And more than anything I hope it met the standards of my giftee for the exchange in some small way~


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